The Tulip Sacrament

This volume introduces a poet who specializes in eccentric juxtapositions. ""My Grandma and the Sack of Potatoes"" (which also discusses Prokofiev's music, and indirectly concerns sustenance) works extremely well, as do other poems about her grandmother. But another poem, comparing menstruation to rows of tomatoes, seems immature, as does Sobelman's tendency to give animals or plants human speech: ""...Summer/ cuts us...'' respond the rats in a poem that embraces Jesus, Charlie Parker and the season's heat. The narration in these works is continually interrupted by fragmented, italicized commentary bearing little apparent relation to the tale. Working with long, prosaic lines, she takes an often striking image and then works it to death, frequently substituting an apparently revealing stand (``...I have banished/ my vagina to Siberia, and all my body hairs...'') for more deeply intimate explorations. While Sobelman's deft and often glittery voice is distinctive, by book's end she seems mainly to be imitating herself. (Aug.)