Franklin Delano Reeve, the septuagenarian professor of letters at Wesleyan, is a prolific poet (Concrete Music; The Moon and Other Failures) and translator from the Russian. His latest volume includes a 34-page-long title poem in dialogue, much in the format of W.H. Auden's classic "Age of Anxiety," retelling the Orpheus-Eurydice myth. Performed in 2000 in a London pub with narrators and musical accompaniment, Reeve's "Urban Stampede" garnered good reviews, but on the page it can seem achingly awkward: "and the coffee is richer and sweeter/ than any place else you might treat her," goes one difficult rhyme. Elsewhere what may be meant as wry, accessible verse reads as facile, such as a chorus that reads, "No need to go to school/ to play it cool; don't be a fool; you make your own rules./ The first one, like in thermodynamics,/ or pottery when you break some ceramics,/ says you keep all the pieces./ Like having nephews and nieces." By contrast, a 24-page section of "Other Poems" contains more successful efforts, such as a well-observed scene in a Chinese food market, "Three Fish": "Like Madame DeFarge at the scaffold, they cast their cold eyes/ on each comer: Who bid you sail/ from the sea into this frozen despair?" Despite such moments, inquisitive browsers would do better to start with Reeve's earlier books and Russian translations to get a real idea of this still-ambitious writer. (Jan.)
Forecast:Reeve is the father of actor-director Christopher Reeve. This modest book could attract a larger house's interest in a selected.
