_The Seven Ages_ by Louise Glck (Ecco $23) These are the intimate, sad, fearless poems of an aging writer practicing her craft with grace and skill. Cool yet revealing, her voice speaks in fables and (ostensibly) autobiography - "And if when I wrote I used only a few words / it was because time always seemed to me short / as though it could be stripped away / at any moment." There is no doubt Ms. Glck is one of our finest poets (and how fortunate we are to be able to read her in her time).

_Alphabet_ by Inger Christensen (New Directions $10.95) The work of this Danish writer - new to us but evidently much revered in Europe - has at last been brought to American readers in a deft, award-winning translation by Susanna Nied. The length of each section in the book is structured according to the Fibonacci sequence (each number is the sum of the two previous numbers), which adds to its unsettling and beautiful cumulative power. _Alphabet_ gives us both the glory of nature and the horror of its destruction. Here is the single, lovely line that starts the book: "apricot trees exist, apricot trees exist."

_Mint Snowball_ by Naomi Shihab Nye (Anhinga $12) Ms. Nye's recognizable embracing and gentle voice permeates these "paragraphs," as she calls them, a few of which were published earlier in a chapbook. Some of her prose poems (as we'd call them) are fully formed narratives about family, friends, strangers. Others are brief, almost mysterious snapshots of place or time or person.

_How to Do Things with Tears_ by Allen Grossman (New Directions $14.95) If you have not read this poet's oracular, mournful, comic, demanding, and generous work, well, now is the time to begin. Part poetry and part theory of poetry, his latest collection is, he declares, "a little HOW TO book.. Poetry is the most realistic of arts. Poetic knowledge is useful KNOWLEDGE (knowledge that helps out with tears)." But the poems and notes here do not offer up cures for suffering ("Any NEW poetry must be aware that there is nothing that will suffice"). What they give is deep thinking and deep feeling in a majestic - but not at all stale or stolid - way. "Mind is a pot. / Let it stand forever / against the leakiness // of things."

_Something I Expected to be Different_ by Joshua Beckman (Verse $12) This is Mr. Beckman's second book, after the APR Prize winning _Things Are Happening_, and its tone is breezy and mysterious. He seems truly to possess the odd grace Frank O'Hara had, but it's put to use in a dreamier fashion. This slim book is an utter delight for the most part, with Mr. Beckman occasionally slipping into a self-indulgence that is less than interesting. But he does so rarely, and the strengths here far outweigh those few moments of weaknesses. Give this book a look.

_Exercises in Style_ by Raymond Queneau (New Directions $10.95) So someone suggested to someone that they read this book (it's an old one; this edition has been available since 1981) and the second someone ordered it from us and what a delightful book it is! The gist of it is that a simple story is told in 99 different styles. Some are confounding and all are thoroughly amusing. The temptation is to excerpt the first sentence of the couple-of-paragraphs-long story as it's told in the Narrative Style, then in the Logical Analysis Style, then in the Free Verse Style, and then in one or two more. The truth is this book is so charming nothing short of printing the whole thing would be at all satisfying. And, it's educational. The reader is happily reminded of the power of tone and word choice when telling any little thing at all. Wow.

_Day Moon_ by Jon Anderson (Carnegie Mellon $12.95) Yes, for those of you who were paying a particular kind of attention in the 70's and early 80's, this is the Jon Anderson who was a hot property in the poetry world. This is his first collection since his selected poems, _The Milky Way_ in 1983, and it is a gem. His lines are generous, as is his language and humor, and his tone is often so carefree it's addictive. His short poem "A Dog" begins with the couplet "He was sorry now that his life hadn't been more focused. / Between the romps amid the greenery was much boredom" and ends with the line "It's a great life, he thought, you can overwhelmingly smell it." Indeed, Mr. Anderson seems to be overwhelmingly in the thrall of the world, and this book makes his thrall contagious. Please look into it.

_Journey: New & Selected Poems 1969-1999_ by Kathleen Norris (U. of Pittsburgh $16.95) From family chronicles to lyrical meditations on spiritual subjects, this collection from the well-known essayist shows her to be clear-eyed and direct in her approach and her language. The chronicling seems perhaps a touch too prosy, but Ms. Norris's hand with the lyric poem is nicely delicate. A representation of this book would be woefully inadequate if it did not mention Ms. Norris's overt, and often blessedly mysterious, use of Christian images in several of her poems that express her longing and belief.

_The Dictionary of Wordplay_ by Dave Morice (Teachers and Writers Collaborative $19.95) This is an amazing reference book, containing more than 1,200 entries ranging from literary forms such as the acrostic to little known word games like the Tom Swiftie ("I got the first three wrong," she said forthrightly) and Possesive Celebrity (Gloria Swanson=Gloria's wan son). With the large number of entries this is not just a book of parlor tricks, there is much to study and delight in here.

_Body & Soul_ by Sharon Doubiago (Cedar Hill $15) Ms. Doubiago writes unabashedly sexual poems. The memory of sexual contacts and their power and consequences are often her topic. And her sensuality extends to an identification with animals, and the affection and violence accorded them. The allure in her poems is clear: it's her honesty and ability to speak a very fluid mind. This frankness has earned her a small and ardent following. As wild and nearly transcendent as she gets, and she does, she also strays into some dull territory sometimes, both in what she has to say and how she says it. Reading her is compulsive business, as such one takes the good and the bad together.

_Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations_ by Adrienne Rich (Norton $23.95) This collection gathers four earlier essays (to serve as background, Ms. Rich explains) and eight recent prose pieces and interviews, creating a volume that further illuminates her decades-long effort to live and work as an honest citizen-poet. "I write from absolute inner necessity," she explains, "responding to my location in time and place, trying to find a language equal to that."

_The Measured Word: On Poetry and Science_ edited by Kurt Brown (U of Georgia $18.95) Mr. Brown has again tapped into what seems to be a growing interest in the relationship between poetry and science (he also edited _Verse and Universe_, a collection of poems with a science or mathematics theme). Here he has gathered essays by Alice Fulton, Miroslav Holub, Forrest Gander, Pattiann Rogers, and others that address the union (and disunion) of poetic and scientific thought and practice.