cover image Leaving a Shadow

Leaving a Shadow

Heather Allen. Copper Canyon Press, $12 (52pp) ISBN 978-1-55659-113-6

In her second collection (following The Leaf Path), Warn continues her artistic attempt to walk a fine line between the ethereal and the earthly (""I ask the wind to seed my brain with sleep/ so that I may build the rooms of God/ then lounge in oblivion by the pool) and expands her concerns to matters of the heart and of the family. The centerpiece is a series of poems called ""The House of Esther,"" in which the poet imagines the place and roles of several women named after Queen Esther who have survived a range of hardships--including the death camps. Warn finds a powerful spiritual and personal uplift in these tales: ""What can anchor me to earth,/ to five thousand years of Jewish graves,/ to authority in a random universe,/ if not for Esther caring for my drifting/ spirit, for my separated self."" This identification allows her to explore other issues in her own life--the death of her father, the life of her mother, the distance she feels from her lover. Warn's finely articulated observations (""The horizon, not the sky,/ draws me, the place where/ the land's openness, and the sky's/ endlessness meet"") awaken her readers ""into acknowledging/ the invisible seam/ between one being/ and the next."" (Aug.)