Criminal Sonnets

""When all songs were deadened, I heard myself,"" declares Koestenbaum, and this 66-sonnet sequence achieves a moving quietness while reckoning details of crime, 1980s political atrocity, and domestic unraveling. Avoiding sonnet meter and rhyme, the poems nevertheless master the terse exuberance of the form, its broad strokes and sudden turns: ""You must throw out everything for freedom/ and then, I guess, you throw out freedom."" The poems explore the difficulty of writing, with the willed rhythms of daily composition mirroring the challenges of arranging family and marriage (""Is this resistance a trap; if I go/ on, will the code of this form be cracked""). As the speaker moves toward divorce and its ""criminal"" court, her writing powerfully becomes both refuge of control and forum for pained, cathartic expression: ""This formalist/ beseeches her body not to let her/ down. Back home, accused, he swears she lives/ in my bleak imagination. Four more/ lines."" Although the sonnets' plainness often can seem too coy (""Joe's pasta/ wasn't al dente but we had a blast""), the poet's earnestness about craft suggests a hope for personal happiness and gives weight to her journalistic shorthand, speaking to art's ability to cut through distraction and repetition: ""No matter what happens, no matter what,/ I'll write, and I hope I'll live long enough/ in health the years it will take to be a/ good poet, someone I'd consider good--/ and increasingly I'll raise my standards."" (Sept.) FYI: Koestenbaum is the mother of poet, critic and curator Wayne Koestenbaum.