Petals of Zero Petals of One
Zawacki may be the younger poet most interested in continuing the poetic work begun by high modernist and postmodernist writers such as Zukofsky, Olson and Spicer, all of whom he cites in the notes to this third collection of poems. The sequence is Zawacki's primary unit of composition; this collection comprises three sequences of untitled, free verse lyrics, all of them cast in Zawacki's tirelessly serious, fragmentary, searching voice. The first sequence, Georgia, is an associative exploration of the state where Zawacki (Anabranch) lives and teaches. Pages of single-line stanzas sometimes directly address (it wasn't funny Georgia) and more often obliquely and lyrically characterize (sans any essence or pretense of presence, shadow is early) a place that becomes a mirror for the mind of one inhabitant. Arrow's Shadow consists of discrete, right-justified poems that artfully resist paraphrase while studying the qualities of words as objects (the ana-/gram and gram/ -mar of mar-/ gins and mar-/ igolds). The last sequence, Storm, Lustral, while also oblique and challenging, is the most intimate, presenting an easily identifiable I: so far/ ahead of ourselves I/ no longer see us. Zawacki's work is not for everyone—its density and opaqueness can frustrate. But he displays a rigor, earnestness and commitment to poetry as high art; seekers of those virtues will admire this book deeply.(Jan.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.