When There Was Light

The wrenching and intimate second collection from Hoffman (after This Alaska) is rich with tight, lyrical poems that consider difficult subjects, such as mental health (“the gene/ of neuroticism that gorges/ on a mind”) and declining physical health (“The blood/ in his heart is leaking as though/ blood is water sliding slowly/ down the spine from wet hair/ after plunging in a cold and gleaming/ stream when he was just a boy”), antisemitism, alcoholism, and the daily struggle to name what cannot be named (“There must be a word for the lack/ of words for the things we have felt all/ our lives, but couldn’t name”). Silence in its many forms (“Did my family ever/ speak to one another” and “in this world I imagine/ my dead cousins dancing in a landscape”) is challenged. There is also defiance in these pages (“You’ve watched her, dead/ center of the cornfield,/ and it can’t be taken,/ her body bold/ with moonlight, laid bare”). It lands as a multifaceted and meditative look at the lasting powers of memory. (Mar.)