WHEREVER HOME BEGINS: 100 Contemporary Poems

The latest collection from Janeczko (Stardust otel, 1993, etc.) is an exploration of place as the arena for human lives. True to his usual practice, the poet and anthologist brackets the collection with single works that open and close the curtain on groups of poems evoking towns, farms, cities, landscapes, homes, and workplaces, and how lives and memories are rooted in them. The places may be as confined as ""The Closet,"" by Brooke Horvath, or as expansive as the unnamed foreign country at the ""End of the Line,"" by John Taylor. Stylistically, they vary from the formal rigor of the Elizabethan sonnet in Jim Wayne Miller's ""Closing the House"" to the free-floating, unpunctuated strut of Holly Scalera's ""Riverside Park."" With the exception of Gary Soto and X.J. Kennedy, few of the 79 poets are well known, but most have been represented in Janeczko's previous anthologies. First-rate, mature poetry for serious readers.