LOOKING FOR YOUR NAME
A Collection of Contemporary Poems
edited by Paul B. Janeczko
An exceptional 112 American poems on serious themes, written by nearly 90 different poets and assembled by a lauded anthologist and poet (Brickyard Summer, 1989). We're told that the collection began as ``an exploration of `conflict' ''; most of the poems contrast themes and images (beauty and horror, fragility and tenacity) or express mixed feelings (love and loss, nostalgia and regret, pity and anger). A few are frankly celebratory (``Ice Hockey'') or comic (``The Belt Buckle''). The volume is divided into two sections corresponding roughly to ``private'' and ``public'' experience: death, love (including lesbian and gay), athletics, and nature in the first; economic issues, violence, war (especially Vietnam), and family in the second. A garish, surreal jacket, incorporating disparate symbols, does little justice to the richness and complexity within. Fully indexed. (Poetry. 12+)