Mad Dogs of Trieste: New & Selected Poems

Associated with poets growing out of the Beat movement, Vega's verse is at the well-measured and understated end of its spectrum. This 12th collection presents a generous cull of her work from the '70s, '80s and '90s,invoking the direct, even neoclassical energies felt within Corso and di Prima, and fortified by a Keatsian living lyricism. In ""Little Ghost in the Station,"" she writes, ""`Poor John is dead,' he sang,/ and now it was winter, quiet at the window,/ and she did not need a cigarette/ she needed to weep."" A member of PEN's Prison Writing Committee, Vega has taught poetry in prisons for twenty years and is currently director of Incisions/Arts, an organization of writers working with people in prison. Some of Vega's overtly political poems reflect a deeply felt and aching knowledge that has tempered and fortified a poignant view of nature, human or otherwise: ""just because fields are ready for/ planting doesn't mean/ the corn's already down there, green and/ waiting, or that raccoons will scream/ at night, their hands heavy with plunder/ might, might not be/ might, might not, the chattering crows/ wheel off."" In other poems there is a note of passionate response to the death of the speaker's father, mother, friends, that show death as a natural fulfillment life. In a heartfelt elegy for Allen Ginsberg she writes, ""Don't be sorry, you said, speaking/ of your death,/ I've been waiting all my life for this."" Spanning over three decades and four continents--stops include Mexico, El Salvador, the former Czechoslovakia, Peru, Ireland, France, Holland, and all manner of locations in the U.S. and upstate New York--Vega's poems ""go,"" (as Kerouac said, but with a difference) in their own patient, unadorned and dignified way. (Aug.)