The Plot Genie

Conoley's sixth collection—which takes its title from a plot-generating system devised in the 1930s by silent screenwriter Wycliffe A. Hill—is a book of many sources (ancient and contemporary, cerebral and tabloid) that all point toward cinema. Archie, Betty and Veronica appear in one poem, while another features the less likely trio of Walt Whitman, Paul Bunyan and Aristotle, all of them eerily imprisoned by an elaborately illusive studio system. There's an atmosphere of decay throughout, replete with “chambers dim with histories,” and “locusts/ without end.” At its best, the book reads like an exceptional film noir projected onto the mind's eye. “The world is a weird luminescence,” writes Conoley. “A greenish glow, unhinged,” Experimental poetry fans and cinephiles will find much that haunts and stimulates. (Sept.)