April

The speaker in the energetic third collection from Nicholson (What the Lyric Is) wields a voice that is by turns droll, tender, and searing as she navigates a vast array of subjects including art and artists, the body, and the historic and mythic past. The book opens on an epigraph by St. Teresa of Ávila (“But I, a poor wretch, have need of everything”), and Nicholson’s own turns of phrase and inversions align her with the mystical tradition. As she writes in “Spain,” “Having never been to Spain/ I left for it, as one who/ Hazards faith in vagueness,” and in “Lines Heard,” “I absent myself from fate/ A little too often.” In “The Archetype,” she considers different depictions of Leda, from Cézanne to Delacroix to Yeats and beyond, declaring, “I don’t like the modern/ paintings of her story. I prefer/ Those Renaissance Ledas, plopped in/ landscapes rich in Arcadian/ Cliché—chasms, mountains, and clumps/ of woods; palazzi with views of/ The Florentine hills.” These unusual and lively poems are rich with descriptive language that ferries the reader through unexpected places, offering memorable images at every turn. (Apr.)