Tombo

Di Piero (Nitro Nights), an essayist and winner of the 2012 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, delivers an effusive and musical collection (his 11th) that traverses strange landscapes replete with “systemic pleasures.../ that make us feel at home in our elusive lives.” The poems are propelled by an urge to surprise and enrapture. Readers are guided through a well-adorned house, with ornamentations such as “pepper trees, olive trees, lilac,/ narcissus, jasmine.../ and mock orange and eucalyptus” sprinkled throughout, until they feel “the nail clipping’s sting in the carpet.” However, the poems “bite you/ with longing for relief from love,” piling abstraction upon abstraction until the intended meaning becomes either too distilled or too opaque. Too much feels overcooked, leaving one to wonder with Di Piero, “When will you override what’s imperfect/ and simply play?” The title poem describes a crazed man shoeless in a supermarket; the speaker reveals, “I believed his happiness, and coveted/ a tidy universe.” This is painfully evident throughout, as the mess of the world receives a treatment so pristine that it’s practically clinical: “I’m complexifying, as usual,/ saying what should be simply something said.” Di Piero would do well to consider his own advice: “Too much schoolroom poisons the idiom./ Too much reverence stinks up the joint.” (Jan.)