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Michael Carrino's second book of poetry, Under This Combustible Sky, is a richly-peopled collection whose denizens are portrayed in a stark light, like that of certain Hopper paintings, a light no less beautiful for its starkness and hard edges. Reading these poems, one realizes that in lives so full of defeat there are redemptions in solitude, and victories within the sacredness of the moment. 'For me,' Carrino writes in the poem "Cat, Rose, Musical Score", 'self absorbed and anxious, objects explain/ passion, obsession; how you have/ no control unless you agree/ before dancing white on white in silence--/ we are what we arrange.' This could well be a statement of the aesthetic brought to the arrangement of this book: a pure witnessing, at times, of a moment's details which speak volumes of the poem's subject in a language that is both economical and plainly spoken, yet rich in its precision.

I think of the poem "The Woman" in which a photograph of a soldier's Korean mistress is ogled and handed around the family table, a favorite conversation piece:  read more »