The Emerald City of Las Vegas

Wakoski (Inside the Blood Factory), approaching 60, inspects her changing body and does not flinch. She continues to forgo the complex imagery of her earlier work in favor of a conversational, confessional style. In this, the third volume in her The Archaeology of Movies and Books series, she seeks a way for a personal mythology to make sense of fractured, postmodern America. In ``Looking for Beethoven in Las Vegas,'' she writes: ``Driving West,/ old, enlightened,/ I still cannot fold up those/ maps of lost goldmines,/ abandoned trunks full of diamonds,/ of new countries and other planets.'' Nevertheless, the spiritual locale of these poems is the anti-Oz--no place for Dorothy or illusions about one's self. Into her reflections as a ``regular'' in Las Vegas, Wakoski weaves quotes from Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz, Nick Herbert's Quantum Reality and other snatches of text. The result is a close look at the poet's own inner conversation about what it means to be a woman, to be no longer young, to be a poet. Her presence in the best of these poems allows us to ask, with her: ``what/ does it mean to/ control the images/ in your life,'' when those images are often disturbing or incoherent. (Aug.)