Bard, Kinetic

In this lyrical if challenging collection, poet Waldman (Trickster Feminism) brings together essays, interviews, and reviews covering the course of her career. The opening “Sketch” chronicles her life through the 1980s, discussing Waldman’s bohemian childhood in Greenwich Village (“I sat on Lead Belly’s lap as a baby”), her education at Bennington College, formative trips to Egypt and India (“This, surely, was what a writer was meant to do... travel around the world collecting images and stories”), and her early experimental poetry readings that made use of improvisation and singing. Among the highlights are poet Jim Cohn’s interview with the author about her poetry collection The Iovis Trilogy, her reverent account of looking for meaning in Gertrude Stein’s “seemingly impossible” “Stanza XVI,” and rich reflections on the author’s friends and colleagues, including dance critic Edwin Denby, poet John Ashbery, and painter Joe Brainard. Waldman’s dispatches serve as a love letter to the process and power of poetry, though some may find frustrating her occasional impenetrable excursions into the avant-garde (“Reality establishes the real or does it, and you notice how it is winning in the realities of how to perceive it does it is recognizable it is a frame”). Still, this captures the breadth and rigor of Waldman’s talents. (Jan.)