Foxglovewise Poems

Mlinko's seventh book of poetry begins and ends with parental death: opening with unique names in a Scottish cemetery and closing with "The Cemetery of Pseudonyms," in which the speaker queries: "Are we bound to the soil we're born or consigned to?" With characteristically inventive wordplay, Mlinko scavenges headstones for signs of past lives and laments the misplacement of her father's ashes: "I cringe to think where / their resting place must be, tossed / in some landfill on his old commute." Other poems stand out for their attention to geographic detail. An esteemed professor at the University of Florida, Mlinko draws special attention to that peculiar state, with its flamboyance of flamingos strung along a horizon cut from "[s]ky and bayou, calm as mirrors," "poolside palms surgically / relieved of their fruit," and pedicured feet clad in flip-flops, shuffling in "shambolic iambs over / the dune." For a midcareer poet with an already rich body of work, Mlinko delivers again on the promise of a richly rewarding smorgasbord of sound, image, feeling, and thought.

Mlinko's sonically rich latest (after Venice) draws on familial intimacy, loss, and the search for deeper understanding in poems that deal with the death of a mother and its generational impact: "my relatives/ changed their amphibrachic name to Bass." Mlinko is rarely less than dazzling thanks to the pleasure and rigor of her phrasing: "A seraglio of interior paramours"; "The lighthouse fruits like a bromeliad." These layered, allusive, and intelligent poems are various in their tones and colors, doing much to ensure that they keep "the ear at right angles to the eye" ("The Empire of Flora"). Many walk a line between wit and meditation ("the Unreal Conditional the tragic tense," or, as she writes elsewhere, "The coolness is applied to parts in pain"). There is a moving and unignorable sense of grief and loss beneath the surface, in an expertly managed balance with the luster of the vocabulary and music of these poems. Full of exquisitely observed internal and external landscapes ("I've been exiled to Paradise,/ it seems"), this is exemplary. (Jan.)