The Outskirts of Troy

In a time when poetry often appears to have become a narrow, solipsistic and trivial pursuit, the long view of Dennis is heartening. Informed by the spirit of Homer and the Greek tragedians, Dennis's fifth book takes stock of our civilization, asking ""Why America seems as afraid of change/ As Rome was at the end of the Empire''why so many of us seem unconscious of the ongoing tragedy of global politics, apparently content that what happens elsewhere has no relevance to our fate. At the same time, Dennis inquires into the nature of our species as the building, questing and war-making animal, the nature of the real and ideal republic, and the possibility of justice. If Dennis is a poet of ideas, his poems do not offer answers or even criticisms of the status quo so much as they attempt to define the political and philosophical problems in which we are mired. Compelling and provocative as they are accessible to anyone familiar with the story of the Trojan horse, these poems capture the Weltgeist of the '80s with a vivid exactitude while suggesting a kind of universal history of mankind. (January)