BOOKS
Those neighbors disappeared
from the block because of divorce:
how we all disappear under a moon
which my roommate said
hangs high in every neighborhood.
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There is sadness in the fact that "we couldn't be restored."
Indeed, melancholy informs much of this exquisite book, the ti–
tle poem of which ("The Clasp") is particularly fine. It's about a
string of pearls, clasped shut in the poem by the somnambulant
poet. The pearls become otherworldly as the poet contemplates
their origin, which of course recalls their end: But I have only
the tiny adder's head
clasp staring at me, whose coiled
body is a string of blue kelp, all
bladder and beads, and if I opened
the mouth of what I've lulled asleep,
the viper, on waking, might strike
what it first sees: me, its tail.
The four sequences that make up
The Squanicook Eclogues
by
Melissa Green are poised and accomplished. The first sequence,
from which the book takes its title, resurrects a lost world that
seems almost Pre-Raphaelite in its particularity. The first poem,
"April," opens with this:
Mter a blustery, fretful March, the fields have yawned,
tossing off their goosedown coverlets to thaw.
In airing upstairs farmhouse rooms, the sunlight paints
A sudden gold-leaf on the dresser drawers and wall.
In his oldest jacket, I wade the oxen road,
And under my boots, a gingery leaf-fall breeds new growth
Beside the crooked stone fence bordering two states.
Her first sequence affects the casualness of a notebook, but
there is finally nothing casual in its design. As we follow the
poet-daughter throught the seasons of a New England year beside
