Lake Shore Drive

Dense, angry and hard to forget, Notre Dame poet-in-residence Wilkinson's sixth book comprises an anxious denunciation of modern international systems of money and power. Just as unsettling as his earlier work (i.e., Proud Flesh), but easier to follow, these odes, series, mythic retellings and verse-portraits pursue the underbelly of capitalism, from sports arenas to airport runways, where ""stuck-up integrity/ plundering the biosphere,/ rolls the thin mantle to a lump sum."" His gnarled, forbidding visions are not for everyone: ""a back-handed archaeology restuffs the earth,"" while ""the ghosts of the dead drive machines/ beautifully engineered to collect the blood needed."" The energy of these poems, however, is undeniable, their force unmistakable, and this may be the book through which they catch on.