cover image Maxims from My Mother's Milk/Hymns to Him: A Dialogue

Maxims from My Mother's Milk/Hymns to Him: A Dialogue

Douglas Messerli. Sun & Moon, $12.95 (70pp) ISBN 978-1-55713-031-0

With reckless wordplay, Messerli rummages around in the preconscious realm where ideas are hatched: ``Out of words / come the mouths of babes / bursting into longabort of it.'' These poems happen, unpredictably, like a short story that writes itself. In exploring how language acts as a perceptual filter, Messerli, author of River to Rivet: A Poetic Trilogy , strives to capture the mind's irregular rhythms and ever-shifting focus. Yet his verses are more than delicate, sometimes wickedly clever word-experiments. In the act of purifying language, the poet aims to restore the yin-yang balance of male and female energies within his psyche and to reconcile the polarities of a treacherous world. Images of growth and natural potential naturally abound: wet birch branches, ``valleys . . . always hungry for mountains,'' ``one sapling which who knows / could become the sun!'' A life-affirming, lyrical sampler. (Feb.)