Wishbone Galaxy

This promising first book offers an eccentric commentary on love, sex and family. Roberts has a dexterous poetic voice, one that either tells a story or, better yet, disappears behind the story, allowing you to enter it. Roberts also has a keen ability to spot the perfect metaphor. However, this very proclivity quickly becomes debilitating: often, the images are simply a little too clever, a feeling enforced by the fact that Roberts, instead of searching for something new, relies on variations of the same metaphor to carry the entire poem. It is unfortunate, too, that she doesn't resist the urge to usher everything into a sexual context. Just as a poem begins to take off in an interesting direction, Roberts may stop it short and neatly tie it up with a few lines about ``the curve of our bodies / and the bodies of those we love,'' or some other romantic allusion. But at best, Roberts lets her cadenced poetic voice carry the poem, allowing it to find its own language and story line. These poems comprise the lucky side of the wishbone. (July)