About Love

This aptly titled collection by renowned Irish poet Montague ( Poisoned Lands ) equates emotion with knowing the proper words to express emotion. The lovers in one lyric are ``tonguetied.'' Another poem traces the sexual implications of Shakespeare's ``country matters,'' sensitively depicting a country girl's quest for a love she has no name for, until she's forced to settle for brazen copulation. Elsewhere, the cruel, vengeful aspects of sex are explored via religious or mythical imagery; Medusa's ``presence strikes gashes / Of light into the skull, / Rears the genitals / Tears away all / I had so carefully built-- / Position, marriage, fame.'' Perfectly chosen retellings from Ireland's early legends appear sporadically to lend an even more explicit and scenic undertone (the first case of adultery or drunk girls lustfully roaming the streets during a festival). Once these lewd origins are exposed, Montague's personal yet universal poems become angrier, but no less loving. One speaker reflects on quiet moments from a marriage's final days. The poet mourns a friend's suicide, along with his own inability to have cared more when she was alive. From love to divorce to death for lack of love to loneliness in old age, this volume is a veritable symphony. (Oct.)