Isolato

Following up the her debut Dark Sky Question, Szporluk puts the self's biological, sexual, oneiric and psychological discourses through a number of sinuous paces. The introductory ""One Thousand Bullfrogs Rejoice"" begins by proposing a physiological basis for erotic triangles: ""It is dark inside the body, and wet,/ and double-hearted."" Poems that require attention to decode finally resolve into clear, clever metaphors for youth, maturity, motherhood, choice and compulsion--a caterpillar turning into a pupa; a fish being caught; a rainstorm ending and beginning again. Some of Szporluk's best ideas come up in a series of poems named after the dry ""seas"" (maria, singular mare) on the moon: in ""Mare Nubium,"" ""the children figure as dilations,/ the double-life of something that went wrong,/ that turned around inside the cornea, and poked it/ with the mirror-image of his horns."" ""Elsewhere"" wrings a convincingly honest torment from the old, difficult subgenre of the echo-poem. Readers who imagine a much, much stranger Louise Gl ck will have come some way toward seeing Szporluk's compelling, fluid methods and preoccupations. (Apr.)