The Mother on the Other Side of the World: Poems

There is only one instance of punctuation to be found in Hall's fifth collection; the resultant enjambments and phrasal torquings--particularly as they often serve a particularly insistent male desire--can suggest William Carlos Williams, but more often bring to mind e.e. cummings: ""a glimpse of white T-shirt/ and then the whole a bed a rug/ a table an unlit lamp chairs/ two windows billowing white/ shadows moving the moonlight now."" Although Hall's eschewing of verbal bric-a-brac and the end-of-poem emotional catharsis seems similar to the verse associated with the New American Poetry, an unreformed self-psychology is betrayed by such prosaic saws as ""I bend forward already knee-deep/ in the pond watching my hand change/ underwater at eye level"" or ""I see the child I was/ with all his skin/ clothed his back turned always."" The book is divided into five sections of seven to nine poems each. The fourth contains the more risky confessions (sex with mother's fox fur; intimations of sexual abuse). The last attempts to widen the book's scope with a poem titled ""Mogadishu"": ""what had once been her face/ was now all eyes open the child/ lay on a roadside pallet watching/ the dusty direction from which help would come...."" One poem later, ""God's Overture"" ends ""I ejaculated for the first time/ Fall 1948 Glendale California/ no idea what was happening/ ...making noises promising God anything/ for the chance to start over from scratch."" Readers won't be as sorely tempted. (Aug.)