Present Vanishing: Poems
In his seventh collection, Allen, a student of Buddhism for 50 years, wanders through a variety of topics-from the Buddha to Elvis, from frustrations with the internet to the art of buttering bread-and emerges full of gratitude. Still, meditations on mortality crop up throughout the book's four sections, as do warnings of "real dragons, fire-breathing, vulnerable-under-the-chin dragons/ who live on horizons." But, mostly, the simple joy of encountering a new image propels these poems: Allen hopefully proclaims "the universe is really a small delicatessen" and "I will suck the color out of Lucky Charms." About half of these poems are set in single long-lined columns, which some readers may find too uniform, though there are lovely moments of pure musicality in the shorter poems organized in couplets or quatrains. Gracefully assuming many shapes and sizes, these poems are likely to please readers seeking incarnations of the spirits of Whitman and Creeley at their most joyful.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.