topics: |  poetry | usa

Those aren't stars, darling
That's your nervous system
Nanna didn't take you to planetariums like this
Go on, touch --from "Hyper-Berceuse: 3 A.M."

August Kleinzahler's new poems stretch and go places he has never gone
before: they have his signature high color and rhythmic jump, but they take
on a breadth of voice and achieve registers that his earlier work only hinted
at. Ranging from Vegas and Mayfair to the Asian steppes and contemporary
Berlin, these poems touch down at will in tableaux where Liberace
unceremoniously meets with St. Kevin and Attila with Zsa Zsa Gabor. Surprise
after surprise, nothing seems to lie outside Kleinzahler's purview. This is
the strongest collection to date from a poet with "the vision and confident
skill to make American poetry new" (Clive Wilmer, The Times [London]).