Partially kept /

Ronk (Vertigo) is a well-kept secret in the contemporary experimental poetry scene; her work deserves greater attention. Her ninth collection of poems is composed of three sequences of short lyrics that attend to the elusiveness of language and humanity's shifting sense of the past. The poems of the title sequence quote sentences from Sir Thomas Browne, 17th-century essayist and plant lover, weaving his language in with Ronk's to meditate on the fragility of life and the ways ideas-especially ideas about faith versus science-get lost in translation through time: "While he saith, with incredible Artifice hath Nature framed// where by the way we cannot but wish we might examine// all things observable by land and sea." The more conversational poems of the second sequence, "No Sky," contemplate the thin line between the natural and man-made worlds: "She holds the phone to the air so I can hear the geese flying overhead." The final section, "August," shows Ronk at her best, letting her open-ended phrases elegize the passage of the world she observes: "It was long ago and I admire now the afternoon,// the outing that had been planned,// the light on the water that might have come." This is a beautiful and philosophical book. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

The very title of PEN USA/National Poetry Series winner Ronk's (Vertigo; Prepositional) new collection, gorgeously told slant, suggests her underlying theme: "As I understand my job, it is, while suggesting order, to make things appear as much as possible/ to be the way they are in normal vision." But what, in fact, is normal vision? We always see the world piecemeal, from different perspectives. Life is in the movement, in the distance we travel-"the morning moving gladly, is now come to pass"-and we define ourselves less by concrete being than by the progress we make. In one particularly felicitous observation, Ronk says: "Let me not be, or being only in gravel/ the brushed sound it makes underfoot// or under that or before the foot hits the ground." Not for nothing are ever-growing plants featured strongly here, and judiciously used quotes from 17th-century essayist Sir Thomas Browne highlight both distance and connection, as befitting the book's organic feel. VERDICT Highly recommended for anyone interested in contemporary poetry.-Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.