Blue Atlas

The resilient and confessional eighth book from Rich (Gallery of Postcards and Maps) centers on a pressured midterm abortion undergone when a relationship fails. Named for the Blue Atlas cedar, a hardy Moroccan species that “can reproduce spontaneously from seed,” the collection recounts a Peace Corp stint in West Africa, a breakup in Paris, sex in a millet field, and a palmist in Safed, Israel, who serves up Kabbalistic wisdom and a directive: “please, do not leave yourself again.” The proprietor of a bath boutique in Morocco offers tea and ointment amid “soap mixed from camel milk and night-blooming jasmine.” The details of the central breakup (presented in one poem as a q&a, in another as a curriculum vitae) feel hopeless, if a bit vague. “I write of you to stake a claim,” the speaker explains, bemoaning the “West African wedding wrap/ sequestered in the back of the closet.... Who was the girl locked inside the alchemical stitch—soon to create such a symphonic mess of it—.” Though occasionally oblique, these poems offer a surreal and globally minded meditation on loss. (Apr.)

Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly stated that the collection centers on two abortions, not one.