PROFANE HALO
Gillian Conoley, . . Verse, $13 (96pp) ISBN 978-0-9746353-2-3
Exuberant and challenging, the quick cuts and vibrant, freestanding images in Conoley's fifth volume let her see America from many sides and in all sorts of scales, from the ground level of coastal suburbs to the grand cycles of political history. "Dear Sunset that was sun of now/ Near Greatness, dear tongue my Queen dear rock solid," the title poem asks, "how could we know that we are forerunners?" There follows a series of verbally brilliant, sometimes strikingly fragmentary poems, some perhaps inspired by photographs; Conoley lights up American spaces and persons past and present, embedding quotes from poetic luminaries (Dickinson, Zukofsky) and showing a slant toward the Pacific coast, where "California floats its prisons in the sea." Conoley (
Reviewed on: 04/18/2005
Genre: Nonfiction