Circadian by Joanna KlinkPenguin Poets, 2007

These poems are concerned with daily rhythms of the title, but also longer ones: geologic, planetary, evolutionary time-scales. Birds recur throughout, often in sudden flight, like those in the second poem that “drop and lift off the roof,/aerial sweeps, or just bursts of/ feather, wings, claws […]” or the “sixteen waxwings in the juniper” in “Thoughts on Fog.” There is also water, stars, rock, ice and winter light or darkness. There is much wonderful concrete detail (a vase of flowers, “vinegar and glass”) but there’s also a vagueness I found off-putting or difficult: the I/you/we of the poems seem, so often, like far-off voices that won’t resolve into solid personae.