Field's debut Point and Line
(2000) won praise for its obvious intelligence and its genre-bending forms; the second collection from this experimental poet, playwright and essayist offers perhaps even more various narrative material. The scientifically minded Field blurs the line between human beings and animals, between actions and thoughts, and between captive and wild, understood and incomprehensible, beasts. These blurs come together in "Zoologic," the non-narrative, two-character verse play that concludes the volume, and for which all the earlier pieces prepare us. One of the best pieces, "Feeling into Motion," largely examines the history and geography of rail, road and air routes through Alaska: "Can we name a child 'Alaska,' " Field asks, "for the action which is directed towards the sea?" A long (perhaps too long) central poem scrambles and retells episodes from Homer's Odyssey
, returning to the animalistic Cyclops, and to the sirens' visceral appeal. "Autocartography" puns repeatedly on the poet's name to suggest that she herself is both her own poetic territory and its map. Field's frequently shifting scenes evoke Alice Notley, Anne Carson and James Joyce, though rarely all three at once. Her combination of conceits with intuitions generate poems which beg, sometimes for empathy, sometimes for a decoder ring: critics and ordinary readers may find themselves simultaneously baffled and pleased. (Nov.)
