Each Thing Unblurred Is Broken

The laconic, mysterious single lines in this second volume from Baker (Like Wind Loves a Window) look back to the poetry of the 1970s, with prayer-like overtones, flirtations with minimalism, and a search for answers among birds, stones, and bones. A figure in one of Baker’s visions “let the earth strain her/ as she reached for its ruin.” Another remembers “I swam in air like the moon.../ God touched me and more emptiness was born.” Baker’s liberal use of white space and puzzling titles (“Debtor to the Promise,” “What Owns My Demand”) suggest that her mysteries are less the secrets of the soul than a sense of the landscape, an ecological vision to replace faiths that we no longer entertain. This poet sounds comfortable—or perhaps uncomfortable—inhabiting a character and speaking hermetically, as if from on high: her companion (or alter ego), Gilda, may be the poet, or an actor, or a wild animal. Baker, a New York art appraiser, also brings her sense of negative space and strong reactions to physical violation to these clipped lines, asking on Gilda’s behalf, “why do all that gallop/ also weep.” Skeptics may find the verse puzzling, or simply too short; others will want to fill in the blanks that it leaves. [em](Nov.) [/em]