Timothy Liu, _Of Thee I Sing_

ANOTHER VOLUME I picked up because the author was giving a read in the vicinity.  I hadn't read a book by Liu before, and in fact this is not his most recent, but I liked it well enough to acquire the most recent one (For Dust Thou Art) as well.

Several poems follow the pattern of the first, "Ars Poetica" -- seven to ten short, end-stopped, double-spaced lines, highly disjunctive:

Even then those fissures could be seen.

Once a grand hotel in another age.

Yes it was, wasn't it, he said.

All the world day-trading suicide shares.

Sinking through the valves of sleep.

Crowned by spurts of milky jet.

The craft could be taught but not the art.

"Last Day," "Sine Qua Non," "Sturm und Drang," "Anniversary," "Of Thee I Sing," "La Divina," and "County General" proceed similarly, and I found myself looking forward to these recurring events, each of which gave me the feeling of an irregular polygon rotating slowly in my brain.  Nice.

Between these events were more familiar kinds of poems -- couplets, tercets, lots of enjambment, some autobiography ("Il Trittico"), some politics ("From Sea to Shining Sea"), some wit ("Bisexuality," "Getting There"), some anger ("Archaic Torso," "A Song of Experience), consistently skillful, occasionally passionate.  No rotating irregular polygons, though.

Obviously a versatile and polished writer, but I'm not sure I've found the thing that Timothy Liu and only Timothy Liu has.  Those polygons will keep me looking for it, however.