Conjugations and Reiterations: Poems

Albert Murray's ""Aubades: epic exits and other twelve bar riffs"" evokes the ""freight train"" and ""sawmill whistles"" of hard labor before the ""singer"" gets around to romance. In the next piece, the blues are abandoned in favor of a pert, mock-officious speech peppered with civic jargon, delivering dangerously offhand opinions about scarecrows and ""municipal cleanup budgets/ for red letter day celebrations/ of legendary heroic actions."" In Conjunctions and Reiterations, Murray (The Spyglass Tree), a novelist and nonfiction writer and winner of the National Book Critics Circle's Ivan Sandorff Award for lifetime achievement, displays a terrific range of voice, rhythm and interest. Whether in the slow blues refrains or in a later poem that mixes academy-speak with black vernacular, his prosody always seamlessly supports his content, his eye and ear jointly keeping time. (Nov. 21)