The brilliance of Joyelle McSweeney's poems is a given; what remains delightfully open to negotiation are its methodologies and its mien. Is she an earnest relator, using wit and gesture to tell the story faster? Or does she take the piss of her subjects, using perfected skills of mimicry and divination to exploit, spot on, their errant humanities? In her second book McSweeney finds her subjects in the long form; "The Commandrine" is a verse-play that in nine scenes tells the story of sailors Zest, Coast, Ivory, and Irish, and their watery run-in with the Devil. "The Cockatoos Morose" stirs Eliotic grandeur with Stevensian absurdity for a cocktail of delirious observation and rigorous leaps of the sort McSweeney is certain to become famous for. "Crusade-dream flips like a standard. The standard / narrows to a point. And points. / Then it dips like a fern."

"A 'commandrine' is the female captain of a ship, and in the long verse play that gives this sophomore book its title, our leader attempts to guide four unruly sailors who frequently converse with the devil. 'Shall I exercise my command?' asks the commandrine, making it clear that this poem, and the rest of this nervy collection, has that most fundamental question of art making at stake: What constitutes the authority of the artist? McSweeney offers no real answer to this ancient unanswerable ('Don't you know/ the riddle?' asks the poet. 'I am the world I cannot see'), but raises the question in a manner as convincing as it is playful. And as in life, art making blends with other forms of union and reproduction (the first poem ends with the line, 'Ent'ring our marriage ride'; the last is titled 'The Born Fetus'), and with renewal: 'Toothbrush into a yogurt cup, Recyclamente! I am so/ adamant. The siren with a catch in its cry starts over.'" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)