PROFANE HALO

Exuberant and challenging, the quick cuts and vibrant, freestanding images in Conoley's fifth volume let her see America from many sides and in all sorts of scales, from the ground level of coastal suburbs to the grand cycles of political history. "Dear Sunset that was sun of now/ Near Greatness, dear tongue my Queen dear rock solid," the title poem asks, "how could we know that we are forerunners?" There follows a series of verbally brilliant, sometimes strikingly fragmentary poems, some perhaps inspired by photographs; Conoley lights up American spaces and persons past and present, embedding quotes from poetic luminaries (Dickinson, Zukofsky) and showing a slant toward the Pacific coast, where "California floats its prisons in the sea." Conoley (Beckon ), who teaches at Sonoma State, also runs the hip poetry journal Volt ; if her last book took much (perhaps too much) from Jorie Graham, this one recalls such peers as Brenda Hillman and Claudia Keelan. Though sometimes scattered, even chaotic, Conoley's odes and dithyrambs convey remarkable emotion, from joy ("ecstatic the sparrows/ in bursts in trees/ above the Western American fence") to whimsy to disorienting pain ("Night wounds, let me introduce you/ to the day wounds"). This is a strong mid-career book with plenty to recommend itself in terms of condensed macropolitics and felt regionalism. But coming so soon after superficially similar volumes from Keelan (The Devotion Field ) and Eleni Sikelianos (The California Poem ), Conoley's project may not get the oxygen it needs. (Apr.)