"Sonnets from the dark lady and other poems" by Jennifer Reeser (Saint James Infirmary Books, 2012)

Poems from POETRY, The Dark Horse, American Arts Quarterly, Able Muse, MEASURE, etc. In the Foreword Paul Stevens writes that her style "has an unmistakably Elizabethan and Jacobean feel to it, deriving from the vigor and energy of her deployment of language, figure and image, the delight in word-play and verbal music". I can see that in some poems. More often I'm confused by the mixture of light and heavy poems, and even more so when there's a mix within a poem. For example I can't get a handle on "The lady who lives here" which begins "The lady who lives here is horribly vain/ Her mirrors are many, a mess to maintain" - is it for kids? A parody? I can only make sense of "a mess to maintain" if the mess is what's seen in the mirrors, and "maintain" means "improve" rather than "keep". "Litany" seems deadly serious, but the content's little better.

The poem that has the following (which takes many words to say not much)

This is the place one's palette turns to coal, one's bed turns to a pallet, stately taste to grime upon the palate; where the whole vivid giddiness of feeling goes to waste, and pride and moral posture rot

ends with "Seclusion is the ransom of the soul" which I like.

Here's the start of "Vogue"

Playing with princesses, coloring pages Inked in a magazine drawn from the ages, Muscle and modishness meet the ideal. Marionettes in contempt of a meal Hang - without strings - from the strength of their gazes. Bent in your hands, their submission amazes.

There's much to like here, but what does "coloring pages Inked in a magazine drawn from the ages" mean? Has meaning got lost in sound? Is "pages" a pun related to "princesses"? Is "coloring" a verb, an adjective or both? Is "drawn" a pun? Why "Bent"?

Does the rhyme help? The extracts below would be more compact and elegant without the rhyme.

In the absence of a basement, A dry attic will suffice To hide beneath some casement Damning evidence of vice. ("Formula")

passed down from generation to generation, or picked up from Goodwills, the preservation of which gives one a sense of heritage, tradition, continuity, privilege ("The Charm of Candelabras")

Then there are other poems that go way over my head.

The card decks etched with phantoms, checks and chatelaines,       As children paint toy plaster masks for contraband,   As unchecked waves wash up against a sea-walled strand,    Obscure doors opened on their own give one chilbains.

What algebraic voodoo now may we summon by some drilling of the moon to choke the concupiscence of a zombie, a real, real creature of a black lagoon? ("Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico")

There's love and friendship too. Here's the final stanza of "Civic Centre", showing how the relationship between two people at an opera can waver -

"Sit up. Pay close attention. Sugar Plum is dancing with such dignity," I tell you, half-disheartened, when I hear you hum, you know Tchaikovsky's symphony so well.

It's a good ending - she's not trying too hard.

The sonnets of the title are perhaps the best poems in the book. They're way over my head too. They sound like poetry even if, when I scrutinize them, they don't all make sense to me. The following for example starts well, but after that I get lost.

Call Love a forger's counterfeit of peace, Naive, complacent, loose, unkempt, forthcoming, Archaic, quaint, a traitor true, a grease. Regardless, women will continue humming As if it meant dementia to despise This Neat Suite sham, this No-Man's Paradise.

This is from sonnet 10 -

Existent in the will of comprehension, Upheld by both the foresight and the hind, Are bounds and bonds about which future tension Admitting love with distance, holds in mind.

I can't paraphrase this. Perhaps I shouldn't try. Perhaps I should first read the sonnet that inspired it. Is there a pun on "Admitting"?

Sonnet 17 starts with

Here are no stone Madonnas on my rugs, Enshrouding the Child by various embraces With varied faces, in shawls or shrugs On Galilee silks or high piano cases.

The poem ends with "Love, I am not thy mother, but thy match". "match" as in "perfect match" - i.e. partner? The rest of the poem doesn't help me. I struggle with such pieces. Why the shrugs? What/who is on high piano cases, and what are those cases anyway?