In this unexpectedly direct sophomore effort, Wagner blends charm with aggression. Wagner's Miss America
(2001) showed a wary critic of consumer culture questioning linguistic givens; these poems, while no less self-conscious, show considerably more verve. "I'm an example, and experimental/ Attempt to assess how a kid of my talents/ Responds when she's given the life that I was," one poem says; two pages later, though, Wagner disavows "The glamorous self and its story." Ragged exclamations and folk and playground rhymes give her choppy, hip discourse surprising energy; her anger—and her willingness to identify its causes—set it further apart. Some of those causes come from sexual experience, others from the travails of raising a young son. Childbearing and motherhood take over the second half of this fairly short book, to fiery effect: "I hate the baby, stop crying... I hate you coming over my life like a bag"; "At my breast/ He sold himself/ To me as my/ Needer." Readers accustomed to canny ironies may find her "outrageous,/ power-outageous" interjections too demonstrative, but her powerful ends finally justify their strenuous means. (June)
