Lost Wax

Behind a mannered, sleek prosody that spills across the page in ragged line-breaks and odd gaps between words, the poems of this fine, austere debut are composed of simple objects--the color red, the shirt stain, the deceptively simple pronoun. And as in minimalist painting, Ramsdell's patterns of small objects and sounds gather into insistent, affective works: ""look/ at it look at it. I// ran all the way to tell you this./ This world is manageable."" The poems have a passion for control (""opened spontaneously/ opened in response to verbal stimuli/ opened in response to pain/ did not open""), showing the influence of Ann Lauterbach and, typographically, of Susan Howe. But, like them, Ramsdell leaves room for the charged, out-of-control proliferation of feelings and speech (""Each time I opened my mouth it was already public, something had happened to it like blood leaving a wound..."") and an indirect, wary feminism. Selected by James Tate for the annual multi-sponsor, multi-volume National Poetry Series, this first book marks further recognition for the edgy poetics represented in Talisman's New (American) Poets anthology (Forecasts, Feb 23), and for a poet of oblique, startling resources. (May)