The Room

First books of poetry are sometimes marked by hesitancy and indirection; this one is not. Instead, Lease introduces a curiously powerful voice and establishes a singular style in work that ranges from stark syllabic poems reminiscent of the Black Mountain school, to others rich in surrealistic images, to discursive prose poems. Lease wields primal images to mirror a desolate subjective world: ``The lead sun. / Snow falling straight down / On graphite-colored water, / Yellow slick leaves, concrete.'' The evocative title poem, about the impending loss of a relationship, juxtaposes casual--even confessional--prose poems, formal quatrains, single-line stanzas, and images such as ``I have eight legs and an exoskeleton, / my eyes are livid taupe, and in each mandible I hold a tiny, scream / ing baby.'' Other prose poems capture the momentary blur between natural world and inner perception, as when ``my hands breathe new tightening inside the branch.'' Lease's voice weakens only when the sensual images become predictable--``I breathe like an oak tree / I taste your sweating skin''--or when overloaded images are more precious than precise. But Lease more often rewards readers by allowing them a memorable glimpse into the painful yet intelligible realm of loss and poetry itself. (May)