The Stenographer's Breakfast

In this debut volume McCue has arranged her poems to elaborate upon the conceit of a stenographer's day, dividing her collection into sections with headings that correspond to relevant tasks: dictation, transcription and translation. Yet she fails to develop the multifold possibilities along this line. Since, for instance, the poet indicates that secretarial manuals once used the term ``dictator'' without self-consciousness, the stenographer's occupation could be a vehicle for exploring the nature of freedom, power and powerlessness or the activity of replicating language that is not one's own in order to understand its impact upon imagination. Too often, however, McCue's poems are technically amateurish (``Crossing the lake, it rained until / air swelled into damp cotton . . . '') and intellectually stale (``am I dictation's instrument / fostered at the CAREER GIRL'S store?''). The surreal plots of some of the works hinge on details that remain opaque, while in others the setting is hackneyed, as in a poem that begins by describing clouds hanging like stones above a new barn. (Apr.)