Rave: Poems, 1975-1998

Throughout this hefty selection from a quarter-century's work, Broumas stays loyal to materials, themes and scenes that marked her Yale Younger Poets' Prize-winning collection of 1977: female figures from Greek mythology and European fairy tales, contemporary women loving women, light-filled landscapes, horror-filled history, meals that offer communion and promise community. Broumas grew up in Greece, with Greek as her first language. Rave--the title suggests rites at once pre- and postmodern--brings together poems from five books Broumas wrote alone, two sets of collaborations and a prose statement (""Moon,"" about her influences and aspirations). Many of the earlier poems recall reams of small ""i""-driven magazine verse, pushed on by an insistent eros (""some weird mutation of orgasm/ a spasm""), but often lit by stand-out images, as in the stammered ""Foreigner"": ""Down is stove and the stack of logs/ Up is bed and the climate the tropical."" Abstractions can turn the work prosy, and politics can emerge as mere assertion, but at her best Broumas is learned and adventurous. ""Days of Argument & Blossom"" ends part II of the recent Perpetua: ""Earth on a new eve, no lover/ no later that won't echo as refrain.... Stubborn and generous/ about our pleasure let us be as we,/ unaccountably happy here,/ escape the wait to hear the spit/ fall on the scythe of hours."" Such lines head straight for the big questions, without looking back. (June)