Mysteries of Small Houses (Penguin Poets)

This book is many things simultaneously: a collection of experimental poems utilizing different female personae; a cry of abject despair regarding US foreign policy; a set of incantations, curses, and other witchery; a call for the creation of a new species, defecting from the old. The fact that none of these things are particularly popular make it all the more impressive that this book ever made it to press. Enjoyable in small doses, sobering at its full length (at 344 pages it dwarfs most other volumes of contemporary poetry on my shelf).

Review of Mysteries of Small Houses, 1998, 160 pages (it seems like multiple works are all tucked into this work ID number):

Very good, manages to stay inside the mirror rather than degenerating into sophism or angst-confession. Combines the funny-serious insight of McHugh:

manager and part owner of Needles

Auto Supply; he certainly

supplies me with auto parts, pieces of subcutaneous self.

with the narrative exorcism familiar from Sharon Olds:

I haven't written well for a while, which do I want more

Poetry or life?