Yusef Komunyakaa's new collection is the titillatingly named _Talking Dirty to the Gods_ (cloth, $23; FSG). Each of the poems consists of four four-line stanzas - a tight form he ably packs with blood and sex, gods and sheriffs, maggots and raccoons, mud and joy.

Mark Strand's latest book is intriguing in design and content. _Chicken, Shadow, Moon & More_ (cloth, $21.95; Turtle Point) is a book of lists, with each list rising from a repeated word ("throat," "wind," "sleep," and the words of the title, for example). Strand says of these creations, "Sometimes sense matters, sometimes it doesn't." Quite.

Four years after his early death at 56, Joseph Brodsky's _Collected Poems in English_ has been released (cloth, $30; FSG). Included are all the poems he published in English (both written in, and translated into from the Russian), including some appearing for the first time in book form. An impressive, satisfying volume.

Janet Lewis has been better known for her historical fiction and her marriage to Yvor Winters than for her clear and graceful lyrics. But _The Selected Poems of Janet Lewis_ (paper, $14.95; Swallow) will perhaps begin to shift the balance. Covering 75 years, the collection includes a fine sampling of her work. Her writing has what Robert Pinsky has called a "moral passion," and some of her poems on nature are breathtaking.

_Kissing the Bread: New & Selected Poems, 1969-1999_ is the latest offering from Sandra Gilbert (cloth, $29.95; Nor-ton). This generous volume includes work Ms. Gilbert had set aside following the tragic death of her husband, which she wrote of movingly in Ghost Volcano, a collection excerpted here along with four others. She is well known for her scholarship on women authors, but her poetry also exhibits the skill and eye of a strong writer.

Chinese poet Bei Dao has been in exile in the United States since the Tiananmen Square massacre. _Unlock_ (paper, $13.95; New Directions), his latest volume, contains work written here and showing the influence of Paul Celan and Csar Vallejo, writers he read after leaving China. Like their poems, Bei Dao's are often surreal, filled with the truth and strangeness of dreams.

Contemporary Irish women's poetry seems to be thriving, thanks in no small part to Nuala N Dhomhnaill. Her new collection, _The Water Horse_ (paper, $12.95; Wake Forest), is a rich mixture of myth and modern life, laced with wit, verve, and sadness. This bilingual edition is translated by the poets Medbh McGuckian and Eilan N Chuilleanin.

If we did not convince you to take a look at Ernst Jandl's _Dingfest/Thingsure_ awhile ago, then we did not do our job. We have the great pleasure of talking about his work again now that Burning Deck has published _Reft and Light_ (paper, $10). Jandl, born in Vienna in 1925 and recently deceased, was a marvelously playful experimental poet, creating sound and visual poems. Because his pieces are difficult to translate literally, this volume includes imitations of Jandl's methods by a number of American poets (including Seattle's own Laynie Browne). It's the kind of book that makes you want to join in.

How to categorize Laura Moriarty's _Nude Memoir_ (paper, $9; Krupskaya)? It is a compelling and unsettling read, an experimental noir tale woven through with contemplation of the body, of women's bodies, of art - "The body is a corpse. A corpus. (A work.)," she writes. This book is haunted and haunting.

_Tell Me_ is Kim Addonizio's latest (paper, $12.50; BOA). She is the mistress of what Billy Collins called, "intensified versions of the barroom ballad," and these passionate poems are filled with both mournfulness and defiance.

What a gift to readers is _Crossing the Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese_ (paper, $19.95; BOA), painstakingly, lovingly, respectfully translated by Sam Hamill. As if the poetry weren't enough to savor, Mr. Hamill has written a fascinating introductory essay.

Other intriguing anthologies have been published recently as well. Of course, fall signals the release of the year's _Best American Poetry_ volume (paper, $16; Scribner's). Editor for 2000 is Rita Dove. Included in the back of the book are former editors' picks for the best poems of the century - and in one case an explanation for the refusal to do so (let the arguments begin).

_ Jewish American Poetry: Poems, Commentary, and Reflections_ (paper, $22.95; Brandeis), is divided into two parts - the first containing poems and comments from writers as different as Charles Bernstein and Marge Piercy; the second, a collection of essays on the history and range of Jewish American poetry.

Peter Johnson has produced _The Best of "The Prose Poem: An International Journal"_ (paper, $15; White Pine), a magazine he has edited since 1992. This is a healthy selection of contemporary prose poetry, a form whose definition, and even validity, continues to be debated.

Talisman House has issued two impressive anthologies. Timothy Liu has edited _Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry_ (paper, $24.95), selecting from work written or published since 1950. His inclusions make for good reading, and his preface raises important questions about the notion of a "gay sensibility." _Crossing Centuries: The New Generation in Russian Poetry_ (paper, $24.95) is a door to a world little known to Americans. John High and a group of poets and scholars have edited this selection marking the transformations in Russian poetry in the last 50 years.

SOME OF THE NEW BOOKS FROM PEOPLE OR PRESSES WITH NORTHWEST ROOTS

Sherman Alexie's latest is _One Stick Song_ (paper, $15; cloth, $25; Hanging Loose). Mr. Alexie wears many hats but considers himself a poet at the core, and the title poem of this book is an elegy that proves his power. We are also flattered, and tickled, by his poem "Open Books," but we deny knowledge of most of the gossip contained therein.

Bart Baxter's most recent is _The Man with St. Vitus' Dance_ (paper, $10; Floating Bridge). Mr. Baxter is well known for his formal and slam poetry, and his performances of each. Included with this collection is a CD-ROM that contains video of his reading three long poems and audio of the entire book.

James Bertolino comes up with _26 Poems From Snail River_ (paper,$7.50; Egress Studio Press), a lovely chapbook of pieces from his full-length collection _Snail River_, which appeared first in the Quarterly Review of Literature. Mr. Bertolino's work is as always: charming, odd, rich, and pithy.

Brooding Heron Press from Waldron Island has published three limited-edition, letterpress chapbooks, one each from Naomi Shihab Nye, Coleman Barks (translating Rumi), and Jane Hirshfield. The chapbooks are made by folding one large sheet of paper into a pocket-sized book. The poems, in each case, have not appeared in book form before. And each is signed by the author. How much? A mere $8.50 apiece. Count on the supply running out.

In the audio department, we have a CD of some of the highlights of The Seattle Poetry Slam Live ($12), including Mr. Baxter, Michael Hood, Kris Caldwell, Todd Davis, Anitra L. Freeman, and Dave Caserio, among others. Port Townsend's Copper Canyon Press continues their fine Listener's Guide series with a generous CD of Olga Broumas ($12) reading her work and that of Odysseas Elytis.

Neile Graham's newest is _Blood Memory_ (paper, $14.95; BuscheckBooks), a collection of poems in which the lives of women, one in particular, are explored. Nature and people and time are mixed together into a mystical, sensual work.

Peter Pereira is a physician, and the poems in _The Lost Twin_ (paper, $12; Grey Spider Press) are full of the knowl-edge of struggle, death, and recovery that is his working environment. Here lyric attention is paid to the lives of others.

Black Square has published _Echo Regime_ (paper, $9), John Olson's new collection. In his skillful hands, language and objects and the delicious relationship between them become poems of playful thought and thoughtful play.