And

Few new books of American poems have more unity—or more happiness—than the latest from Blumenthal: the law professor, memoirist, novelist (Dusty Angel ) and psychotherapist has set himself the daunting task of depicting joy in all its varieties. Almost all the poems use long unrhymed lines and long sentences; all the titles begin with “And.” Many titles read like updates on biblical verse (“And Whose Is the Triumph of Stinky Similitude? And Where Is the Rapture of the Seas?”), as if Blumenthal were writing his own book of psalms. His extended praise includes the spiritual (“he knows// that the air is rife with the anarchy of the possible,/ that the hills are moving, ever so secretly, during/ the night”) but also the erotic and the familial: his poems about love almost dare us to call them sentimental. Blumenthal has long made the positive emotions, those that risk sentimentality, his special subject: sometimes the results of that long study turn sublime. Elsewhere, though, Blumenthal fails to find words as exuberant or as satisfying as he wants to remind us that life can be: some readers will thrill, but others will likely balk, at “the lustful little angel that inhabits his body,” “the deliquescence of the air whispering its soothing song.” (May)