Selected Poems

Halpern ( Foreign Neon ), editor of the Ecco Press and Antaeus , is a poet who writes with an expansive modesty that allows him a freedom to consider what matters to him realistically. The poems are the record of his considerations. Their anti-heroic tone and stance are often delicately reportorial in style (and varying in subtlety), calling on seemingly plain language to tell us what has happened and its import. Fine balances are struck in the poetry; they are generally finer than in Halpern's several prose poems, also included. Characteristically, the balancing involves a weighing of contrasted neutrals and measured distances; his uses of whiteness (``White, the color of clarity / where nothing has to live'') and stillness as metaphors, for instance, are nuanced, deliberate and memorable. The poetry reasons. It is refreshingly accessible, though in its understatement one can miss rhythm as a presence and feel, at times, the chill of a coolness. But the sense of removal in a speaker lets him think. It also lets us think. And that's useful. (June)