Foriegnn Bodie

A total of four books issue this month from one of New York poetry's most esteemed duos, Nada Gordon and Gary Sullivan. Gordon's small-format Foreign Body, which made the cover of the SPD catalogue this season (SPD distributes all four books), draws on fragment and frangible literary plenty, haiku and hypersensuality, as well as on experimental modernists. In 1988, Gordon began an 11-year stint in Tokyo, and her pleasingly emotionally disheveled speaker tries to make sense of her surroundings (""Head fills with desires. A mauve refrigerator full of fish"") while remaining resolutely herself: ""my lovely hysterical grin/ gums showing little fangs/ eyes as smiling slits/ nose like a bat's// think white hand + black insects/ or tea rose + mildew / YIN TRAVELS, you might say.""