THE GUNS AND FLAGS PROJECT

This book's uncannily timely title conceals "An Unusual Optimism," "Reverent Estimations," "A Soldier's Uniform" and 36 other mostly stanza-less free-verse firearms and colors. Not to be confused with the poet, critic and Library of America editor without the "G.," O'Brien made the cover of the American Poetry Review last year, but here hides his visage and shows us "the thinking loins,/ a catenation merging with the outline of the body/ first light against the hurt side of the city," until, finally, "the French came, and they killed us./ ...They killed us and kept killing us/ until we spread out some legacy/ in a red-and-white feuilleton of snow."