Rancho Notorious
In his second volume of poetry, Garcia (The Flying Garcias)  focuses on the horrific: a man bites the heads off chickens, a  husband imagines his wife dying in a plane crash, a driver traps  a pedestrian against a bridge railing. The speakers alternate  between male and female and young and old (though most are  middle-aged, lonely, weary, and misunderstood). The driving  force behind these impersonal portraits seems to be the  "suspicion that some/ small thing you did not do/ has sealed  your fate." Taken individually, these poems might fascinate  (attested to by excellent publication credits), but collected,  they are agony personified. In one of his perhaps most revealing  moments near the book's end, the speaker admits that "pursuing  happiness/ is like pursuing a murderer it has its depressing  moments." There is a sameness here: most poems are two pages  long, with prosaic but well-crafted lines, and most speakers are  thoroughly believable. But is this really what one wants from a  book of poetry? Not recommended. Rochelle Ratner, formerly with  "Soho Weekly News," New YorkCopyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.