Rivers of Salt

An American poet residing in Jerusalem, Kaufman ( Claims ) continues to deftly juxtapose modern Israel with Old Testament landscapes. But these recent pieces are imbued with new conflicts. The book's opening poem was written during the Gulf war: ``We just have to / lie here in the dark, soothed after love, / getting used to how it is,'' the speaker says, gas mask in the closet, waiting in the interim between air raid signals. Kaufman's poems work individually, but take on greater power in sequence, and each of this book's four sections chronicles a time and place. The danger inherent in the book's first section prompts a look at mother-daughter ties from the perspective of a woman whose mother had died, whose daughters are mothers themselves. The book closes with two sections written in other lands--India, then Italy. The poems from India are especially poignant. Contrast ``It's the past I look into, / but the past keeps growing'' with the beggar at the taxi window who is ``not getting smaller / in the distance / as we drive away''--words which reflect on the preceding poems. The mesh of form and content throughout this volume is at times astounding. (May)