Heavenly Questions

Admired during the 1980s and 1990s for her glittering way with traditional forms, Schnackenberg (Supernatural Love) published very little for almost a decade: this sometimes heartbreaking, always ornate sixth collection will please her admirers, though it may not add to their number. Just six poems make up the whole, each one a long composition in fluent blank verse: as before, Schnackenberg bestows her gifts of diction on scientific wonderments, on the horrors of history, and on the religious and philosophical texts of the past: a pencil contains “The vein of graphite ore preoccupied/ In microcrystalline eternity,/ In graphite’s interlinking lattices”: on September 11, “the heads of drums/ Exploded outward into gaping stars/ And bloodstained towers dematerialized.” That vision and others throughout the book lean on excerpts from the Bhagavad-Gita and on the Chinese classic poem from which she takes her title, as the poet seeks (but does not find) a way to explain the evil and pain in this world. Schnackenberg’s husband, the philosopher Robert Nozick, died in 2002. Most of the poems (however grand their speculation) also recall the terminal illness of an unnamed beloved: “He tugged my face to his, as if he took/ His own life in his hands... and won’t let go/ Unless you leave your fingerprints on me.” (Oct.)