Ending in Planes

This sixth effort from Kocher—one of two this year (the other is Goodbye Lyric)—resounds with frighteningly deep feeling and makes a big presence out of physical form, even though these pages are also full of white space. Long lines, sparsely arranged on the book’s extra-wide page, suggest travel as a way to flee, and to understand, romances gone wrong. Kocher’s attempts to extend and to define the poetic line work alongside, or else against, her scrutiny of erotic dependence and painful independence: “You are Not what he expected Not so tall Pretty for who you are,” she writes, “He says all of this simply snapping his fingers You are to be You be what was Like All transitive.” Such goals, such exclamations, place Kocher (like several other Colorado poets) on ground cleared by C.D. Wright. But her sense of space—and her ways to track the wish to flee, the sense of fear in a landscape—lets Kocher stand out. “Do not believe the freeways either,” she warns. “The freeways cough with you so you’re not alone// Your sediment Your ditch not particularly rare A burnt spot in the rug not undone.” [em](Nov.) [/em]