A Night in Brooklyn

Desire creates reality in the latest from Nurkse: “We wanted so much that there be a world/ as we lay naked on our gray-striped mattress,” the book begins. Throughout its three sections “each act [has] a past and a future/ an almost and absolute,” and those who act and desire are vulnerable, haunted by time’s forward motion. The Brooklyn of the opening title section is at once literal borough and a living context where, “Though we are fading/ all our actions last forever.” Here, even the dead can remember Brooklyn—a deceased father can still frequent the haunt where his son tends bar—while the living always return “to slip the key in the lock,/ and come back to the present,” where lovers fight next door. From far-reaching outskirts of this all-encompassing Brooklyn, new voices enter in the second section, “Elsewhere,” including Andalusian fragments and riddles from Spanish and French. Lastly, “No Time,” further records and questions what’s fleeting: “If this is happiness,/ how shall we leave it,/ if this is grief, how to enter it.” Nurkse recalls: “How we loved to create a world,” and he renders our imperfect world perfectly in this stunning book. (July)