Sleeping Late on Judgment Day: Poems

Jane Mayhall. Alfred A. Knopf, $22 (112pp) ISBN 978-1-4000-4174-9

Fans of Virginia Hamilton Adair and Ruth Stone will find the poems of Jane Mayhall, making her book debut at 85, ""tough in the unwatered heat./ An old-age brownish glare not wiped/ out, the inner resplendent."" While some may balk at a ""Ballad of Playing Tennis with Theodore Roethke at Yaddo"" or considering ""[Lincoln] Kirstein's Table,"" two of the more name-droppy poems in Sleeping Late on Judgment Day, Mayhall has insights for all tastes and moods, ""cordial, volatile.""

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