In the Belly

By turns lyrical, narrative, erudite and colloquial, Gewanter's first collection rarely lets observation or narrative run unimpeded by an intelligent self-conciousness. When he probes moral issues, he inevitably turns also to the process of that probing. Gewanter's strongest work is informed by the moral reasoning of Judaism. The poem ""Yeartime for the Intifada,"" while exercising a cautious distance, describes how the speaker lit a yartzeit candle for a dead Palestinian boy. In ""The Pardon,"" which addresses the anti-Semitism of Ezra Pound, Gewanter struggles with his love of Pound's poetry: ""Jew and Jew-hater, fingers stretched/ round each other's throat, wheeze/ their intimate threats in this/ unending heaven of rhetoric."" When he turns to the natural world, observation is quickly followed by commentary, as in the engaging ""Conduct of Our Loves,"" in which a nearly gothic description of angler fish copulating is followed by a portrait of an aging flounder: ""one eye/ migrates toward the other, ontogeny/ posing as Modern Art."" Displaying technical mastery and an abiding concern with how we make sense of the world, Gewanter fashions a dextrous, sometimes cerebral poetry that's liable to turn its eager attention to anything. (Feb.)