History of the Child

The capacious and playful latest from Shuttle (Lyonesse) offers twin poles of memory and imagination, taking place in part among the scenes, recollections, and visions of childhood: “My childhood lives on there/ and my parent shadows/ and all my days and nights that will never bear fruit.” She captures the blending of love and loss, of personal grief and environmental anxiety, that comes with growing up: “Hearts are quiet they’re full and deep with secrets/ their lives are strange/ their thoughts are dark and airy/ under the bullfight stars” (“Hearts by Night”). The collection’s first sequence is contemplative, populated by unexpected cameos from kings and queens, “Father Lear the king so shaped his bairns/ with the wand’s upper hand/ the fire’s swanny wing/ smooth tippet of the spider” (“Father Lear”). “I’m afraid/ of my childhood/ of which I’ve little memory,” Shuttle notes, evoking the volume’s haunted mood as she attempts to reenter a lost world from which “light/ still streams out/ from the long ago” and “god polishes/ his best boots/ for the funeral/ of the earth.” Quietly witty and slyly allusive, this dispenses poignant reflections on the poet’s personal history. (Apr.)