Matthew Gavin Frank"s "Sagittarius Agitprop"
Unable--or, unwilling?--to distinguish between a muskrat and a wheelbarrow ("Zodiac"), these poems perform metaphoric transformations, at times with blinding speed. "Saucer" begins: Here is the saucer upon which my father's head pools like coffee. He's beyond medication. The hummingbirds have overtaken him, bricking his smile with sugarcubes. There is precise observation: The mosquito wrinkles against the glass ("Mirror") There is magnification. About Brussels sprouts, Frank, who also authored a food-and-wine memoir Barolo , writes: Architecturally-correct, each is a habitat with staircases. My favorite poem of this debut collection is one I wish I have written. "The Dressmaker's Dummy" begins with a description so sensitive it turns spiritual: She stands as if nobly eviscerated, rib- cage inflated as a balloon, a balloon's skeleton, a mold, a blueprint . . . and develops with an anecdote about his wife in a thrift store, sensing ...