Took House

The imaginative latest from Camp (Turquoise Door) offers poems that vibrate with an undertone of unrest beneath their exploration of intoxicating intimacy, nature, and art. The entries delve into hunger and longing: the bedroom, a restaurant with a table that “wished to be between us,” the bar simmering in “the roux/ of a dark/ where fat questions/ of virtue/ were slung.” A series of ekphrastic poems are interspersed and offer new takes on works by Georgia O’Keeffe, Eva Hesse, Annie Leibovitz, and Donald Judd. In “Empirical Theories of a Box-Maker,” Camp reimagines Judd’s installation, “100 Untitled Works in Mill Aluminum,” through a wild, sprawling catalogue of his untitled, boxlike sculptures: “this untitled box of accidents this untitled box of signals this untitled box with dark heavy corners this untitled box of flaws this untitled box of air this untitled box of precision.” Though the poems occasionally lean toward being unnecessarily confusing, Camp asks readers to linger in the fraught space between control and the loss of it. This is a stirring, original collection. (Aug.)