Interior with Sudden Joy by Brenda ShaughnessyFarrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999

I wanted to like this book more than I did; I wanted more from it, or maybe just less opacity. There are moments where the play of words, the rhythm of them, feels perfect, and there are images that coalesce, but much of this collection stayed vague, just out of reach. Even so: I probably will look for and read her other book, Human Dark with Sugar. Re-reading this one, and reading aloud, helped: the first poem talks about serviceberries, then a cloister of nuns; it wasn’t ’til I read it aloud that I thought of a cluster of berries and a cloister of nuns and grinned. Bits I like include this, from “Lure, Lapse”: “we are growing down/our winter-slung bodies fooled” (8). I think my favorite poem in the book is “Transpassional,” which is pleasingly odd and pleasingly concrete; the whole second half of it, especially, is about perfect, funny and plaintive and sweet. Also: “You’re Not Home, It’s Probably Better,” which you can read in its entirety here, and “The Lamp Garden,” about a hidden city dreamspace full of “small bulbs of desire,” which change everything (54), and “Museé,” about what paintings do when you look away.