THE DOG WRITES ON THE WINDOW WITH HIS NOSE And Other Poems

Twenty-two small poems, most by big names--among them Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, William Stafford, William Carlos Williams, and Theodore Roethke. None is more complicated than a single image, the haiku scale is typical, and some are even slighter: the book's title is not a poem's title but a complete entry (it's by Philip Whalen); the title of Jim Gibbons' ""Poem for Cat Haters"" is longer than the work itself (which reads, in toto, ""catscat""); and Aram Saroyan's column of crickets--the word repeated 25 times, once to a line, until the 26th runs off the page--will leave you wondering whether Kherdian's definition of poetry has a floor. More felicitous is Roy Drew's ""While I write these/Fat little birds/type upon the snow""; Brautigan contributes some playful quirks with his views of a ""xerox candy bar"" and of ""thousands of pumpkins. . . floating in on the tide""; and there are enough such quizzical conceits to make this an auspicious first brush with poetry. The small format (5 x 7fl) helps, and Nonny Hogrogian's watercolors are pleasant and unassuming, though they tend to reduce whatever is odd or individual in the observations to a uniform, comfortable level.