Consolation and Mirth

Klein (Moving Day) operates heavily in dream logic and puzzles in her disorienting third collection. The tendency is most evident in the middle section of riddles inspired by The Exeter Book, a 10th-century poetry anthology. The riddles pose such questions as "Who was it who told/ you that you must have/ been totally in/ sleep? Opening/ the light of seconds?" Elsewhere, Klein's language echoes instruction manuals or math word problems: "If the father is uncertain/ possibly cuckoo, do you// blame the daughter who turned into water/ to summon a ship?" These lines and others display a sense of the mythical set slightly askew. Klein professes an identification with "rejects," an us-vs.-the-world mentality where the latter does "not get the thickness of our skin// nor its astounding capacity for callous." This is played out to comedic effect in a poem posing as a newsletter for the "Philadelphia Alternate Science Fiction Society" where its fictional author blasts fellow members for failing to be proficient in "KUNG FU of the real" and refers to the ostensibly official Philadelphia Science Fiction Society as "backstabbing/ pea-brained sadists." Klein best work features an artful sensitivity where "a human has a right to try her human feeling," but there is a great deal of wading through the enigmatic to get there. (Nov.)