"Dance," by Lightsey Darst. (Coffee House Press, 97 pages, $17.95.)
'I incline to the opposite of / solipsism," Lightsey Darst declares in her second book of poetry, "Dance." She draws inspiration from a range of sources: kabbalah, the Zodiac, the Guinness World Records book and People magazine.
She cites her sources in notes, allowing the reader to witness her rapacious intellect. The section called "Treasure" was inspired by a priceless vase she calls "absolutely hideous" and a "concrete representation of the cruelty of unequally distributed resources."
In "Shield," she describes dancers depicted on the vase: "The beryl they stand on is sharp & brittle, so / when they step too hard, it shards & so you see these drops of garnet." Wounded in the act of entertaining the viewer, their bleeding makes more beauty in the jewels of blood. Like W.H. Auden in "The Shield of Achilles," Darst uses the description of an art object to raise moral questions.
Her interest in decadence is apparent in her long lines packed with adjectives. She cites Vogue magazine captions as a source text, and suffuses their language with violence: "Ropes of ermine, smotherings of bone silk, queen in red corsets beautiful / without her head."
Darst uses orphaned quotes and seemingly random punctuation. These contribute little beyond a veneer of experimentalism. The sense utterance is accomplished by accompanying instructions on how to read the poems ("Pant between lines. Gesture with ghost hands.").
When her experimental techniques work, they invite readers to participate. In the "Zodiac" section, readers choose from an ordinary deck of cards. The card tells them which poem to read to receive their "horoscope." Like a horoscope, the book is something a reader can return to daily, finding new meaning each time.
"If You're Lucky Is a Theory of Mine," by Matt Mauch. (Trio House Press, 99 pages, $16.)