cover image From a Mobile Home

From a Mobile Home

Nuala Archer. Poolbeg Press, $15.95 (131pp) ISBN 978-1-897648-59-9

An Irish poet, though born and now living in the U.S., Archer writes from a terrain populated by butterflies, birds, moths and dragonflies--anything that flies. Abstract and atmospheric, making excellent use of alliteration and wordplay, many poems recall John Ashbery's. Less effective are works relying on typographical experimentation: the words in ""Star*Mapping My Trans*Atlantic Commutes"" interrupted by asterisks; the lines, each beginning with a comma, in ""Splashie Sweeping."" In the series titled ""Sheela^Na^Gigging ArOund,"" the inserted carets and capitalized letter ""O"" distract from what's otherwise an excellent hymn to female sexuality. Among Archer's best poems are love lyrics, many with a high quotient of anger; other poems, caught up in ""lesbian landscape and lingo,"" may make readers as frustrated as many of the depicted lovers. (Feb.)