Mao & Matisse

Friedman (Human Works) brought New York's famed Saint Mark's Poetry Project into the 1990s as its artistic director, but his latest collection charts a less focused journey. Veering from the contemplatives (``I see your face and it is you in full recognition/ Of my features and relenting troubles'') to the goofy in the prose poem ``On the Road'' (``I am a tanker truck, rolling across the frontier filled with fresh goat's milk... What satisfaction there is in being so nutritious and illuminating!''), Friedman attempts to embrace the fullness of his own exhortation to ``Always recognize the thoroughness of contradiction.'' Here, however, his poetic, and occasionally narrative, attempts at dialectic thought-and occasional references to Mao and the ``revolutionary potential''-are not as rich or effective as longer, more personal works, e.g., ``Chances Are'' and ``Presence.'' (Sept.)