THE ANGELUS BELL

Foster's characters are ambivalent and finally gun-shy concerning their own potential for action: "His grand schemes notwithstanding"; "regardless of whatever we predict"; "aspiration he has never seen but always known"; "no teletype telling us what we're to read"; "You list to the left, vote/ for the first time in years,/ please your mother." Except perhaps where the act of knowing, even subjectively, is concerned, so long as it's not knowledge about people or desire: "Know first that objects and their laws have weight, at least to me and you." Otherwise Foster (The Space Between Her Bed and Clock), founding editor of Talisman House and an English professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology, often chooses contingent verb tenses ("I would once/ have said things"; "you could string/ strong phrases/ on the page") in these elegant portraits of uncertainty. (July)