Late in the Millennium: A Book of Poems

This remarkable second collection by Digges ( Vesper Sparrows ) addresses with intelligence and tenderness the complex nature of love. Calling on fertile natural imagery, the poet advances an elegiac realism--one that combines both passion's desolation and its hopes. Yet the poems also reveal her rigorous analytical impulse, pressing to explore the thought that lies behind feeling. Considering the propensity to lose oneself in new love in ``Circadian Rhythms,'' Digges asks, ``But isn't it instinct's greatest vision / to extend what's possible, / to risk not coming back, / the way light, bending in water, disappearing, / wakes all the colors of earth?'' She seeks to transcend the ordinary, yet without forfeiting a life in the world, and renders the quotidian with affection and faithfulness (in ``The Rockettes,'' the speaker remembers her mother singing ``to the cancan over our wild hurrahs''). By observing howpk suffering enriches, Digges's sharp eye captures the paradoxes of existence. (Nov.)