Purpura's charming and mystifying third collection comprises a book-length sequence of attentive, rapturous untitled poems, most of them addressed to the titular figure, who becomes alternately a found doll, a missing child, a spiritual representative of childhood and a real infant to whom the poet gave birth. Purpura (On Looking
) captures both the fierce love and the flighty weirdness of life with a baby, opting always for the symbolic and the surprising over the literal record: “Come. It's my birthday,” she writes, addressing both her readers, and her baby. “Make me over/ into a thing a tree could use, like light to drink.” Though some readers may feel lost, others should welcome how winter weather, fairy tale scenes and moments of bafflement (“You with a block of ice in your head”) keep Purpura unpredictable. One of the quieter, sweeter segments compares the poet-as-mother to a builder of playgrounds and to a bowerbird: “I went out for a walk to find a blue boat,” she says, “to remind you of home and having to go/ beyond the known, I did not find a boat/ but more blue things than I thought abound.” (Apr.)
