Counter-Amores

The last part is the best part of this astute second volume from Clarvoe: its witty and volatile couplets and stanzas respond, poem by poem, to Ovid’s long Latin poem on love and sex, the Amores. Clarvoe’s sequence takes place in bed, but also in Italy, where she traveled during the runup to the Iraq war; at the movies; and at the beach in Malibu, Calif.: “Desire// hurtles over the last retaining wall, and over the coastal/ highway, where the wild surf, too, goes postal.” Other segments play games with form (couplets repeat end-words rather than rhyming) or play games with lovers: “Oblivious boy, continue to ignore me./ Do I write less than when you were before me?” The rest of the book benefits, but also gets hurt, by close attention to other famous poems, most of them originally in English. Clarvoe crafts point-by-point answers, in the same forms, to Marianne Moore’s “A Grave” (called “A Cradle”), to Wordsworth’s “Resolution and Independence,” to George Herbert’s “Prayer,” and to Elizabeth Bishop’s “Five Flights Up,” among others—readers who know the originals may appreciate the in-jokes or feel disappointed by their proximity. Clarvoe (Invisible Tender) excels when she can see past, or around, the earlier poets she admires, into the acts of observation and insight that amount to truly creative translation. (Oct.)