Long Distance

The idea that ""America may always be more a passage than a place"" is explored with kaleidoscopic resonance and cut-glass clarity in this moving second collection by Mississippi poet Shirley (Chinese Architecture). Throughout, both time and space are evocatively shape-shifting dimensions, as when, on a drive through Oklahoma, ""That road seemed like the future: an emptiness/ that could turn, at any moment, into beauty."" With a seemingly common first-person speaker throughout, these poems invoke love, its loss and an ever-shadowing solitude against an ever-shifting setting (from dusty Texas to the eerily romantic, poolside setting of ""Tropical Deco""). Shirley grounds the numinous in palpable detail (a poem about the Mexican Day of the Dead describes ""...the rooms rich with the smell of bread, pan de los muertos, / lemon-colored loaves shaped in the swelling oval/ of a human soul...""). Reminiscent of poems of the late Richard Hugo, Shirley's measured, lyric language and seamless craftsmanship reveal the offroad intimacies and profundities of the American landscape. (Oct.)