Think Tank

Through cinematic flickers of image, thought, and scene, Carr (Rag) splices short and untitled poem bits that skirt the edge of being comprehensible into a continuously engaging whole. Carr is gifted at creating her own music—“Not by concrete but by owl-light, we sing”—and this collection pushes the expansive power of that music to generate newly meaningful connections. The “owl-light” she sings by never seems arbitrary, but rather deeply thought, earned by emotion as well as deliberation. Readers repeatedly encounter mothers and daughters, sex and flowers, other writers (especially Peruvian poet César Vallejo), and quite a few windows, doors, and other openings: “The flowers are grammatical and taut. This annun-/ ciation/ flowers by rhetoric: vegetal verbs.” Though there is narrative and a clear building of thought, the book should prove more rewarding for readers who let its logic slink in the shadows than those who try to track it. “The best way I can capture events is by trying to resurrect the concept of the beautiful/ Way beyond such categories lies psychic life,” she writes. “When it’s my face in the window, I turn my head,” but even when Carr turns away, there is, thankfully, always something else to be seen, to be added to the intricate thinking she induces. [em](Apr.) [/em]