Dido in Winter

Shaw (Undertow) marks with a sharp eye and a fine ear this technically astute and pleasingly varied%E2%80%94if sometimes overwrought%E2%80%94set of personae, verse-letters, and poems of spiritual meditation and romantic love. She has a way with the single image, making icons out of casual observations ("Bright amnesiac instance,/ little red thread on my jeans") and has fun with impersonations, as Virgil's abandoned Queen Dido of Carthage exchanges verse apologias with Hans Christian Andersen's little match girl. Other poems pursue Eros and agape through unanswered cries and through filmic scenes: "Shapes of birds on the river. Slight backscatter of snow"; "As if in simple ransack, gin-light/ snapping backwards in the sky." Passionate and unafraid of artifice, Shaw "will drop ink on your tongue to be sure you speak no ill/ till the workmen come with leather in their hands." The collection is notable for its variety of free-verse shapes: extended lines, choppy ones, monostichs, quick digressions, long looks at "how strangely things unmoor themselves," and even a play on sentences from Gertrude Stein. More skeptical readers may wonder what sets these points of view apart from other poetry on the same topics, and whether there is a subject, a stance, or a claim about language and life that Shaw has yet to make her own. (Apr.)