Perhaps best known as the longtime editor for the literary journal Chelsea
, Foerster (Double Going
, 2002) has also proven himself as an author of vivid, articulate, lyrical and descriptive verse. This fifth collection begins by addressing the death of the poet's partner, first with pained, realistic poems about his illness, then with self-conscious, classical pastoral elegy: "Sarcophagus of morning: marbleized air; apples studding the abandoned orchard: same/ torch song year after year." From his "narrow grief" and "bitter pity," Foerster then looks back with pithy detail at his Catholic school boyhood in the '60s: readers who share the background will wince in empathy. Much of the rest of the volume comprises elaborate, finely crafted if perhaps too impersonal poems on European and Australian tourist subjects, including a long series about Australian animals, birds and plants: "Hang gliders soar on radiant thermals/ in the easing August light of Mont Ste-Victoire," while the satin bowerbird "entice[s] the demurely dull// green bowerhens/ to his violaceous eyes." (Oct.)
