POEMS 1960-2000

Adcock’s primary interests have been with her from the outset: sex, dreams, sickness, death. Far more remarkable—though at times it seems a limitation—in a selection that spans 40 years, is Adcock’s evenness of tone. From the beginning, her poems were discursive rather than difficult; the goal was engaging conversation rather than soul-searching or a scoring of points. Occasionally, in earlier work, the wittiness becomes too self-regarding, as when she writes of an airplane taking off: “secretly we enter / the obscurely gliding current, and encased / in vitreous calm inhabit the high air.” There is much that is obscure here, and little that glides, but it isn’t the sort of mistake that Adcock makes very often, especially in her later poems. In “Leaving the Tate,” she exits the museum with a new idea of the poet’s vision, noting how any scene can be aestheticized through an optical trick, and concludes: “Art’s whatever you choose to frame.” This thought is at the center of Adcock’s poetry, which alternately crops for strong effect or broadens to include multitudes. In “Send-Off,” she says all that need be said in four lines: “Half an hour before my flight was called / he walked across the airport bar towards me / carrying what was left of our future / together: two drinks on a tray.” In other poems, like “Romania,” written after the fall of the Ceausescu regime, the scope is widened and the last word is given to the speechless: “Is it possible? ‘Da, da!’ say the geese.” The former type of poem—pointed but casual, darkly humorous—is more common, which speaks to the modesty of Adcock’s concerns.

Few of these pieces are breathtaking, but many are well made and most are enjoyable.