But before we start, let's come to an understanding, you and us. Our experience is that no matter how good a book of poetry is, it will have some poems better than others. Some gems and some clunkers. One hopes for a few excellent poems, and several good ones. Our intent here is not to try to fool you into a lemon of a book, but to let you know what's out there, enthusing when we choose to, and maybe chiding once in a while. Our tastes are grounded in our experience of poetry; yours most likely will vary from a little to a lot. Okay? Okay..

_Electric Light_ by Seamus Heaney (FSG $20) Mr. Heaney's thick, rich language is put to use here reconstructing the lush world he inhabits. The book contains several elegies for friends, among them his recently dead contemporaries Ted Hughes, Zbigniew Herbert, and Joseph Brodsky. There are recollections of Mr. Heaney's childhood here, which are also written in a somber, elegiac cadence.

_Letters to Wendy's_ by Joe Wenderoth (Verse $14) This is a collection of prose poems ostensibly originally written on Wendy's (the burger chain) customer comment cards. The title of each is the date it was written, with the book spanning more than a year of nearly daily short missives. And what missives they are: obscene, sometimes violent, and often scatological, with a narrator whose rage and dark humor plays out against the sterile uniformity of corporate concept and its lackey, advertising language. This is either a brilliant and hilarious book or a very troubling one. Maybe both at once. Certainly not for all, but it will connect with some of you.

_The Beauty of the Husband_ by Anne Carson (Knopf $22) As you may know, Ms. Carson has been a store favorite for some years now, and our sense is that pretty much anything she publishes is well worth reading. This collection, subtitled "a fictional essay in 29 tangos," is another strong piece to add to her corner of your library. The story here is of the dissolution of a marriage. It is told chronologically, primarily in the voice of the wife, though the husband and a couple of the minor characters have their say at times. Ms. Carson seems able to evoke clearly and peerlessly the pain, comic absurdities, and pleasures bound up in the concept of love. Her surprising and right-on imagery makes her one of the outstanding poets at work today.

_Milosz's ABC's_ by Czeslaw Milosz (FSG $24) Said to be a Polish literary form, this is a collection of prose pieces arranged alphabetically by topic. The subject in these pieces is Mr. Milosz, of course, either as a character in them or as the speaker of them. They range from recollection (see "Bend," as in Bend, Oregon) to political treatise (see "Congrs"). This alphabetorium becomes a collage, composed of memoirs, rants, and meditations, which comprises a picture of its author.

_Crazy Melon and Chinese Apple: The Poems of Frances Chung_ (Wesleyan $15.95) When she died in 1990 (just 40 years old), Ms. Chung left two poetry manuscripts, published here, to our pleasure, in one volume. Her clear-eyed, kind but unsentimental, graceful, and at times playful poems give us New York's Chinatown and Lower East Side ("Yo vivo in el barrio chino," she writes), as well as other communities of the Chinese diaspora. Her skill can surface in a few lines about fruit or in a prose poem about the clothing factories where neighbors and family worked. Compiler Walter Lew has written an informative "After Words" to close the book.

_Soap_ by Francis Ponge (Stanford $15.95) Not new, but new to us. We'd heard about the book but hadn't realized it was in print until a customer helpfully alerted us (this store thrives on such participation). If you are interested in French literature or the prose poem or the strange power in the detailed description of things, take a look at this writer. Soap was written during WW II, when Mr. Ponge served in the Resistance and soap, like many items, was scarce and prized. The book reveals, as he wanted it to, the evolution of the text, from first notes to, finally, "The Exercise of Soap" and a series of appendixes. An unusual and mesmerizing volume. Writes Mr. Ponge, "As for the paradise of the book, what is it? What else could it be, if not, reader, your reading it."

_Atoms of Delight: An Anthology of Scottish Haiku and Short Poems_ (Pocketbooks $12.95) Scottish haiku?! We can see your smirks from here. However, some of you may have heard Christine wax happy on the work of Scottish artist and poet Ian Hamilton Finlay, much of which shares the brevity and clarity of haiku. This collection, edited by Finlay's son Alec, contains not only haiku and senryu but epigrams, epitaphs, proverbs, one-line poems, one-word poems, and other sorts of "wee" poetry, some even in Gaelic, with translation, and some in dialect. There's much play and loveliness here. Also included are Alec Finlay's enlightening essay explaining how haiku came to Scotland and brief commentaries from contributors.

_The Poet's Dante_ edited by Peter S. Hawkins & Rachel Jacoff (FSG $30) A collection of 19 essays, some excerpts from longer pieces, the others, which stand alone, concerned with the poetry of Dante. This gathering begins with Ezra Pound and, to name a few, includes pieces from Yeats, Mandelstam, Borges, Duncan, Osherow, and Merwin. The essays range in focus from a mystical Yeats to a personal Osherow, but the high esteem in which each writer holds Dante is unvarying.

_Unsleeping_ by Michael Burkard (Sarabande $12.95) These odd poems move as if by dream logic. But whereas dream logic concerns location and image most often, Mr. Burkard also makes use of the associations between words, either in their meanings, spellings, or sounds, for his connections. Did we say odd? Some of these poems are magically transporting and others leave us simply bewildered. This book is for those of you up for a challenge.

_Song of the World Becoming: New and Collected Poems 1981-2001_ by Pattiann Rogers (Milkweed $29.95) Sixty-nine pages of new poems are joined here by the entirety of Ms. Rogers seven previous books. A veritable Pattiann Rogers feast. Her work often displays an exacting, naturalist's eye, and her language is every bit as rich as Mr. Heaney's (for instance), but her music is subtler. She consistently comes off as earthy, sensual, and science-minded, but always with a spiritual core. Quite a package.

_Poemas/Poems_ by Gerardo Diaz (Lost Roads $12.50) The critic Marjorie Perloff calls Mr. Deniz "one of the great poets of Mexico," and Octavio Paz wrote "the sarcasm of Gerardo Deniz is the art of opening one's eyes in the midst of collapse." The poems in translation (this is a bi-lingual edition, for you Spanish language readers) are inspired. Mr. Deniz, a pen name for one Juan Almela, has a way of addressing the reader with a magical plain-spoken-ness that is unique. This collection is difficult for us to describe but very easy for us to like.

_Pleasure Dome: New & Collected Poems_ by Yusef Komunyakaa (Wesleyan $35) A scant 24 pages of new poems and another 25 "early uncollected poems," in this thick hardcover, but the prize here is what looks to be the whole texts of all his prior books, with the exception of last year's _Talking Dirty to the Gods_.

_Collected Poems_ by James Merrill (Knopf $40) His half-smile on the jacket seems a fitting invitation into this thick but not heavy volume. Included are all the poems from ten collections (not the lengthy Changing Light at Sandover), plus some uncollected pieces and translations. Here is Mr. Merrill in all his elegant, contemplative, witty glory. These are poems to be read aloud, the better to savor their often delicious rhyme and meter.

_Inventions of Farewell: A Book of Elegies_ edited by Sandra Gilbert (Norton $25.95) Ms. Gilbert has gathered a 450-page collection of English-language poems written "to confront and confound mortality." Organized both thematically and chronologically, the book reaches from the Middle Ages into the present, from the anonymous ballad, "Lord Randall" to Agha Shahid Ali's "Cremation."

New Audio: The Voice of the Poet series (Random House $17.95, with a 60-minute tape and 64-page booklet) has added John Ashbery, Randall Jarrell, and Five American Women: Louise Bogan, H.D., Edna St. Vincent Millay, Muriel Rukeyser, and Gertrude Stein. Copper Canyon's Listener's Guide series now includes a CD of W.S. Merwin ($12) reading over 40 of his poems in that beautiful voice.