This Way Out

Winch (Falling Out of Bed in a Room with No Floor) carries the traditional markings of lyric poetry with attention to stanza form and line breaks, displaying a modesty with biographical information, and a conventional use of meter and rhyme: "I am sitting here drawing blanks,/ empty of all meaningful thought./ Please pour me another. Thanks./ But put away your money./ I can't be bought." He revels in satire and self-awareness, however, expanding on this historical form with the inclusion of everyday adult life minutiae with ironic and deadpan humor. High points arrive in "Romantic Poem," the speaker's treatise on the "effort to make/ poetic language resemble every/ day speech," and "That Little Extra Something," a contemplation on the expectations, tropes and functions of a lyric poem: "I have very deep insights into the nature/ of art and music, which, if I were to lay/ out in this piece of writing, would be/ evident to all." Reader accessibility is the hallmark of the new book, but it's the author's perceptive subversion and verbal antics threaded throughout the text that gives the audience "that little extra something" when reading. (Apr.)