Iovis

This overlong volume, conceived as a single poem, is an elaborate exercise in self-indulgence. Waldman ( Skin Meat Bones ) justifies the rambling and, for the most part, incoherent work with a simplification of feminist theory: ``I want to don armor of words as they do and fight with liberated tongue & punctured heart. But unlike the men's, my history & myths are personal ones.'' This leads to a hermetic text that eludes meaning for a reader who is not hooked into the poet's circle of friends. The book jumps from juvenile jokes, presumably attributable to the voice of the poet's son (``you're a cracked people / You're a craggy rock cliff / You're Michael Jackson you're Jacky Frosty . . .''), to pretentious refrains (``I RISE BEFORE ISHTAR IN THE EAST . . .''). Those passages in which the meaning is clear offer up banal narrative: ``I lie back & take him in. He wounds me after a fashion.'' The work is patched together with letters, lists and narrow columns of words, but her collage lacks the charm and happy accidents of true randomness, and the language falls short of the purity that makes minimalism interesting. (Mar.)