The Infinitesimals

Kasischke (Space, in Chains) astonishes with her lyricism and metaphorical power as she considers illness and mortality through exacting, imaginative poems. The collection's formal variety amplifies the mysterious, dreamy settings of these poems, which are grounded in their precise interrogations and astute observations. Poems that begin in hospital rooms are transported to a more fable-like atmosphere: "But, having come to visit my father, I/ knelt down in the desert and parted the sands/ to search for the path on my knees and hands./ I drank from the mirage// of the pond for an answer." The brevity of Kasischke's lines movingly captures the absence of death and the limitations on memory, and her mastery of meticulous, though seemingly effortless, description shines throughout, as when she dubs a cake once baked for her father as "Soggy churchbell on a plate," or describes a tumor as a "terrible frog/ Of moonlight and dampness on a log." In "Binoculars," a meditation on consciousness takes on symbolic dimensions, leading to a memory of her mother's death: "The bird on the other side/ of my binoculars-the cold life-light/ around its mind, which was never/ meant to be seen this clearly by a human being." Kasischke composed this true wonder of a book with remarkable care, heart, and skill. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

There's no introductory poem here about finding oneself in a dark wood. But from the title and the book's grim tone, one can see that, like Dante, National Book Critics Circle Award winner Kasischke (Space, in Chains) is traveling the world of the dead. The poet meets people she's known, and she remembers pivotal events such as the loss of her parents-her mother appears frequently. Events can also be as simple as someone tying "your tiny shoes for you," as in "This Is Not a Poem/Fairytale," a poem supposedly not a poem because it's a newspaper article and because its subject-parents abandoning their toddler in a forest-is something that must be remembered in order for the poet to "survive." Then there is the young mother in "Canto One." -Kasischke writes that she "stuck her head in an oven" and calls her the "poet of no way out." One of the most striking images shows this figure standing in a pool of blood. -VERDICT Is -Kasischke dreaming of traversing the layers of hell and meeting Sylvia Plath? Or is she just letting her mind wander? And if so, where is it going? Where is each poem going? At their best, the pieces here see inside the inside of things, but often they just get lost in their own thought.-C. Diane Scharper, Towson Univ., MD (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.