Album for the Young (and Old)

A new collection of the accessible and evocative "micro-verse" from a poet who stuns us time and again in poems of a few short lines.

Pavlova's If There Is Something to Desire was a unique sensation in the poetry world. Her poems, rarely longer than a few lines, thrill and puzzle us like Zen koans, taking up matters philosophical, romantic, sexual, familial, artistic. Since the last volume, Pavlova has lost her beloved husband and translator Steven Seymour, but before his death he had translated hundreds of her new poems, and it is from this wide-ranging group that Album is drawn. Here Pavlova reviews her best loves ("Without you, my unquenchable...grief is bearable / happiness is not), and returns to her childhood to peruse the basic elements that made her ("A rickety fence on which / a glass jar, a rag, a sponge...Mom's listening to the Beatles, Dad to Radio Liberty"). Once again, Pavlova's piquant and often delightfully challenging short poems sum up worlds, for a readership that may wish to tweet as well as read and reread them.

From the Hardcover edition.