A Woman of Property

Few collections this year are likely to match the subtle intelligence in this third outing from Schiff (Revolver), whose syllabic stanzas, intricate syntax, and polymathic repertoire owes more than a bit to Marianne Moore. A few of its 16 poems are brief, but most stretch their legs, as well as their subject matter to include viral contagion, suburban homemaking, tornado sirens, minor court disputes, Greek tragedy, fairy tales, cave art, and the anxieties of new motherhood: “Guests/ come and go and// I rest my rest on the baby’s head, which/ has an opening, and/ consider Justice.” Infant vulnerability, for Schiff, recalls the vulnerability of Americans—to each other, to external threats, to disease, to breakdowns in infrastructure or civic trust. But as political as Schiff gets, she is more often inward looking, trying to understand her own fears and dependencies: “The temptations of self-sufficiency/ are great, but not great/ enough,” she writes in a poem about pregnancy that is also a poem about lobsters in restaurant tanks. Extraordinarily long sentences can be hard to decode, but none are impenetrable, and most introduce punchier follow-throughs. Schiff’s first books took material from songbird biology, jewelry design, and gun manufacture: this one pulls material from anywhere and everywhere, and she fashions it into her sharpest lines yet. [em](Apr.) [/em]