The Complete Stories

The insightful second book from Warren (The Destroyer in the Glass) wrestles with the many forms narrative can take. Warren surveys the possibilities of storytelling in poems that examine the tales people tell about themselves and their families. At times, Warren describes storytelling as a kind of empathic magical thinking: “In a previous draft, I was able to imagine you rising/ to walk around the city at the same time I felt the need to walk,/ or setting down a glass of water as I picked one up.” Blurring the distinction between lyric and narrative in the one-line poem “Village,” Warren writes, “Cedar smoke wanders between the yards, into the linen hung out overnight,” leaving the possible narrative arcs spiraling out across the lawns and beyond. Toward the end of the collection, Warren considers the legacy of his grandfather, Robert Penn Warren, whose racist statements and subsequent attempts at revision point to the dangers and limitations of the narrative process: “He saw/ in his South, an ‘image’—/ as he glossed thirty years later,/ very gently—‘of the unchangeable/ human condition, beautiful, sad, and tragic.’ ” In poems of striking musicality and formal dexterity, Warren reveals how public and private history is shaped by stories. (May)