New and Selected Poems

Maxwell (How the Hell Are You) demonstrates his stylistic range and inimitable sense of play in this strong selection of poems from the 1990s to today. Consistency and evolution are both apparent here; Maxwell has always been fascinated by the construction of sonic patterns, as one of the newer entries suggests: “What he made/ had form, so silence formed around it.” His verbal authority and dynamism allow him to shock and provoke readers with dark undertones of anger, political disquiet, and wistful notes of elegy made resonant by his skillful rhyme schemes. His writing becomes a fitting document for an unsettling epoch: “in the time I’m writing of/ which I am wreathing with the kind of/ ending poems are for.” Maxwell is also a poet of love and its loss: “This is the act of all the descended gods/ of every age and creed: to weary of all/ that never ends, to take a human hand,/ and go back into the house.” At the center of his poetic world is truth-telling: “I know the truth, I know its level sound./ It didn’t speak, or didn’t speak to me.” Entertaining but never superficial, these poems leave a mark. (Oct.)