LOVEROOT

A sensational new collection of poetry with that cover-girl glow. Erica Jong seems to have hit her stride with Fear of Flying as the outspoken, feisty leader of the ball-breaking pack. Art-Shmart, this is personality and with what exuberance it doth sing itself. . . as well as Whitman, Neruda, Colette, the Marys Wollstonecraft and Shelley, Keats, and Anne Sexton (who's ""the dean""). Jong is triumphant--this is the club to which she's now elected. Poems from ""The Penile Colony"" return to that still unfinished task of taking female sexuality out of the closet: ""The flesh is flesh./ The word is on its own."" She says: ""Sylvia Plath Is Alive in Argentina""; she says that bleeding's not so much better than babies--""the heart breaks either way."" Woman-as-Sphinx is her extended metaphor for being buried alive but indomitable. Everything you might have liked about her novel is back again: honesty, intelligence and chic, the girlish grin of the irrepressible ingenue--the poet as flapper. She's a free spirit with a voice and style and gemutlicheit all her own and she's here to stay. Take a bow, Erica.