Red to the Rind

Eating Club In the nearly 60 short lyrics of Red to the Rind, Stan Rice's seventh collection, the poet's New Orleans summons vibrant descriptive panache: ""The great Sugar kettles are brimful of beer and ice. The melt-water has turned the yard into dung. A gangplank of plastic grass Leads us over the muck."" The book concludes with two long poems, ""The Underworld"" and ""Dismemberments,"" which string together short ""linked epiphanies"" into a kind of Dantesque nightmare where Rice's speaker finds himself playing cards while ""sitting in `Hitler's Bed' Like a cherry on an eclair With messed-up hair,"" and then popping out for a Viennese coffee and ""The most delicious pastry I have ever tasted and the contradiction Between Deliciousness and Discipline, well The thought nearly makes breast-milk Come out of my penis."" (June 19)