When: Poems

When is a mix of autobiography and good old storytelling that never forgets a basic writerly tenet: locality is the only universality. Whether the subject is Beethoven's maid hearing strange sounds, a deli waiter bemoaning his work or Wormser as a boy walking through Pikesville, Md., and imagining it's Baudelaire's Paris, the action in each poem is unique in its specific details. The insights the characters achieve, however, and the emotions they feel are universal. So there is the trucker who ""skidded the better part of a quarter-mile/ toward a stopped school bus/ ...and he said he saw himself as a boy."" Try reading that poem without pressing your foot to the floor. Wormser (Atoms, Soul Music, and Other Poems, 1989, etc.) likes to blend profane expression with his appreciation of beauty, as in ""Cow Symphony"": ""Of movement, purity of motive uncommonly/ Encountered. Whimsical tonnage/ Pissing and shitting unfugitively."" Graced with humor, lust and bracing narrative momentum, Wormser's poetry presents a menagerie of wonderfully familiar strangers. (Sept.)