Manderley: Poems

Chosen by Robert Pinsky for the National Poetry Series, Rebecca Wolff's Manderley tears mosses off the old manse of Du Maurier's haunted classic Rebecca, tosses them with a heady late 90s bravura (""Not intonation/ but affect""), and ends up, along with metaphorical ""Day Laborers"" of one poem, ""[p]anting like a god/ in the afterglow of the newly minted."" In other arch eviscerations, ""Mom,"" or the idea of her, ""gets laid/ in all manner of positions,"" while ""The Sun in Winter"" bleaches out bad verse, ""fixed on ginger-red wood siding/ to reflect into the eye/ a burnished spasm of glad/ tiding: antidote to venom of our imagery's/ declining."" Founder and editor of the journal Fence, Wolff here sets the house afire. ( Nov. 26)