Fair Realism

In these lush, free-form poems, her ninth collection, Guest grasps at reality through shifting perspectives as she aims for a truth beyond abstractions or idealizations. Kandinsky's view from his window, Alexander the Great's ancient world of conquest and Flaubert's quest for literary perfection are some of the props in this shadow-play of the mind. The effects of a nude on the viewer, the underlying structure of the cosmos unveiled by a piano piece, the alteration of memories in the crucible of time give rise to Guest's exploratory meditations. Now and again, the reader is nudged into a sense of recognition at ``encountering the marble exactitude of things.'' Yet other pieces fall into the self-referential, solipsistic vacuum occupied by much verse of the so-called New York School. (June)