Wings Moist from the Other World

Shumaker's ( The Circle of Totems ) poems have a slick, polished exterior, while just beneath the surface lie pools of almost treacherous emotion. A man watches through the window of a house as another man prepares dinner for his lover in a seemingly harmless lyric, but by the poem's end we realize this stew he's taking so much care with is composed of human hands. The speaker of another poem describes her own birth and her mother's instant apology to her husband for not having given him a son. Many of Shumaker's best pieces revolve around family--not pleasant tales of growing up in a loving home, but portraits of the angry adult making peace with her long-dead parents. Two diametrically opposed, yet equally harsh, landscapes--the scalding heat of Arizona and the brutal cold of Alaska--heighten the book's tensions. The poet is simultaneously awed by and wrestling with the forces of nature. The sun gives off a ``cancerous grace'' and ``each grain of pollen / is a medieval mace, a weapon against breath,'' yet in this same desert ``water's always holy.'' A small group of poems at the end, displaying a gentle eroticism, hint at a serenity well deserved, if a bit too pat. (Dec.)