Gravity: Poems

Alluding often to an interior world fraught with tumult, Minczeski ( The Reconstruction of Light ) chooses to address his obviously significant emotional and spiritual concerns with banal detachment, as if the events of his life were happening to someone else. More than once the poet touches upon his troubled relationship with his father, yet all that we ultimately learn is that the two men are ``mirror and reflection,'' their personalities too similar for them to achieve any sort of harmony: ``I didn't know my flesh would take on his age and wrinkles, / as we sat facing each other, his bitterness become mine. . . .'' In other poems, Minczeski mentions death almost casually, letting us know only that he is thinking about it. Minczeski is a proficient wordsmith, his images flowing smoothly into each other. But too frequently, he sacrifices the stimulating unruliness of unbridled feeling for a constraining tidiness that is dull and unsatisfying. Only in the sad ``Native Tongue'' does Minczeski give us more than a glimpse of the contents of his troubled heart, ruminating on failure, loss and decay with a wistfulness that is truly touching. (Oct.)