Promesas: Geography of the Impossible

This collection introduces a newcomer whose voice is particularly sustained and developed. Vando (editor of The Helicon Nine Reader ) is constantly searching for ``connections / between my parents' world and this one.'' Phrases of Spanish scattered throughout (with a glossary at the back) remind readers that her roots are in Puerto Rico, that ``Other Island'' looked back on from Kansas or New York City. But more to the point, Vando's is a universal voice expressing childhood anguish and passion. She speaks of the little girl who overstays her welcome at a friend's house because there's no one home at her own, the child fondled by an uncle, the fatherless daughter. Her personas seem forever child-like: dressed in a sailor suit during WW II, away at school with her mother visiting, or the slightly older child receiving letters from her six-year-old sister. The volume loses some of its impact when the speakers mature; where the poems recalling her youth cry out in pain, the narrator looking through adult eyes applies a less successful irony: ``I'm from Borinquen--that tiny island drowning in a sea of Coca-Cola.'' (Apr.)