I am most enamored of the long poem "The Indian Never Had a Horse," in which Adnan employs deceptively simple language in passages of startling juxtaposition. For example, this title poem's first and fourth stanzas: "The certitude of Space is brought / to me by a flight of birds. It / is grey outside and there is a trembling: / fog is too heavy a word // . . . . Sweat runs over my body. / The river beds are dry. / We forgot to brush the / Indians' teeth before the / final slaughter./ O how perfect the afternoon!"

Although her "Other" poems interest me less, they are filled with many wonderful moments and engaging language, such as "The universe is my obsession: / the sea and the sun are / forever mating" and "I am armed with a sphere an octagon and / a heart." ("An Alley of Linden Trees, and Lightning . . .")

Etel Adnan is able to effortlessly meld a classical (Old World) with an experimental (New World) esthetic. This collection, published in 1985, seems to anticipate the post-fragment yet still fragmented poetry moment we now inhabit. As if to demonstrate that uncomfortable and passionate yet unsentimental clarity can be as radical as syntactical and semantic disruption. To use a term coined by a friend, her poetry resides in a world of "juxtapotential." ( )