CONSTANCE

Manhattan book editor Morgan Clifford’s fascinated empathy with the figure of the eponymous Constance Chamberlain, a young poet who combines traces of Sylvia Plath and (her idol) Emily Dickinson with a frustratingly unfulfilled personal life, (just barely) dramatizes her surmise that “poetry . . . finds its life source in suppressed emotions.” Long conversations and thoughtful speculations dominate Constance, which also includes numerous examples of Constance’s work (at least one meditative poem, “The Forest Disagrees,” is a beauty). Poet Cantrell’s frist novel is cleanly and precisely written, but underimagined, underplotted, and crammed with clichés about the writing process, the writer’s sensibility, and the books and authors beloved by its two principal characters. It hints at strong emotions, but declines to render them; the result is unfortunately passive and passionless.