O’Nights

This vigorous second outing from Parks (Field Folly Snow) lends itself to a very specific summary: it is an erotic and romantic lyric (written by a woman, about a modern woman’s life in the city) that blends, collides, and reacts with the northern woodsmanship of an updated Thoreau. The author of Walden provides the title and epigraph, both of which are taken from his journals, and his intrepid spirit guides Parks’s explorations of “the voice of fox paws/ in leaves” and “the woodpile’s reverie.” The many ways to pace and arrange free verse let Parks wander, axe in hand, through her redolent New England terrain (she also includes a couple of prose poems). At the same time—and in the same lines—she presents an urbane figure at ease in her body. “Out of all the places/ I’ve worn this sleeveless dress/ only the woods has been the place// for lust.” A few poems addressed to “the doctor” make clear Parks’s debts to William Carlos Williams, though her American language does not sound like his; instead, she presents a carnival of up-to-date pleasures, erotic and otherwise, where “waking is to happiness as the trashcan is to raccoons and then some.” Picky readers may fault Parks for the lack of variation beyond free verse; most, however, should find in her walk-up apartments and snow-laden pines a source of serious delight. [em](Apr.) [/em]