_New Collected Poems_ by George Oppen, edited by Michael Davidson (New Directions $37.95) In his preface to this welcome volume, Eliot Weinberger describes Oppen as an "honorable man trying to speak in the roar of history." His "speech," though interrupted for nearly three decades while he worked for the Communist Party, fought in WWII, and fled to Mexico during the McCarthy years, remains some of the most powerful, beautiful, and thoughtful in American poetry. In addition to editor Davidson's lengthy introduction and extensive notes, he has restored Oppen's first book, _Discrete Series_, to its original format and reinserted Ezra Pound's preface to it; added Oppen's last book, _Primitive_; and provided sections of uncollected published poems and selected unpublished poems. Oppen wrote in one of those uncollected poems, "I think there is no light in the world / but the world // And I think there is light."

_Shadow of Heaven_ by Ellen Bryant Voigt (Norton $21) In her sixth collection of poetry, Voigt walks gracefully through the land of loss and love and dream. Family and friends, both living and dead, fill her poems, and the natural world shimmers in them. She writes, "The winter field is not / the field of summer lost in snow: it is / another thing, a different thing." Particularly touching are the poems about Agha Shahid Ali and Larry Levis, two fine poets who died much too young.

_My Business Is Circumference: Poets on Influence and Mastery_ edited by Stephen Berg (Paul Dry Books $24.95)Berg asked 28 American poets to select several poems that influenced them, offer a poem of their own that reveals that influence, and write a responding essay. The result is this interesting book, which ends up being both a prose and a poetry anthology. The poets included range in age and fame, among them Hayden Carruth, Jane Hirshfield, Yusef Komunyakaa, Amy Gerstler, Gerald Stern, Jane Mead, and Joe Wenderoth. It's a quirky treat to see unusual groupings of poems (Milton, Ashbery, and Bishop are Lisa Lewis's selections) and a pleasure to read the thoughtful essays offered in explanation.

_The House of Song_ by David Wagoner (U. of Illinois $19.95 paperback, $39.95 cloth) Long a vital and respected part of the Northwest literary community, Wagoner here offers a generous collection of new work. His poems, inviting and open, find their spark in subjects that have drawn him before - nature, family, history, legends, tales. The book's shortest piece is "A Homily for the Preservation of the Spirit in a Time of Dread" -- "In the House of Reptiles, / Behind the safety glass / Of the snake's cage, / Sharing a branch / With its coiled soul mate, / The cricket is singing."

_Green Thoughts, Green Shades: Essays by Contemporary Poets on the Early Modern Lyric_ edited by Jonathan F.S. Post (U. of California $18.95) Post's book sprang from this fine idea: invite "practicing poets" to write essays about 16th and 17th century lyric poetry in English - the poetically rich centuries of Donne, Bradstreet, Jonson, Marvell, Herbert, Milton, Wyatt, Sidney, Rochester. Twelve poets responded, among them Heather McHugh, Robert Hass, Carl Phillips, Eavan Boland, and Thom Gunn. As a taste, we give you the start of "Donne's Sovereignty" by Calvin Bedient: "I have the sunset over a rocky peak on my writing table. No, it's just a red-and-golden dahlia in a black stone vase. No, it's a sunset, if that's what the imagination says it is. All right, it's both."

_Springing: New and Selected Poems_ by Marie Ponsot (Knopf $25) Classy, classical, and good company, Ponsot's poetry is not as well known as one might expect, even though her last volume won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The delightfully titled _Springing_ (a hint of her wit) gathers over forty pages of new work, selections from all four of her earlier books, as well as many previously uncollected poems. Here's the close of "Entranced," one of the new pieces: "Exits are disclosures. / Making an exit / can unlock you- / the way entrances do- // to being / outgoing. // In verse & reverse / word and worm / both turn."

_The Demon and the Angel: Searching for the Source of Artistic Inspiration_ by Edward Hirsch (Harcourt $24) Hirsch envisions this collection of essays as a continuation of his book _How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry_, and readers of that earlier volume will recognize his exuberant, even dramatic voice here. He begins this look at the "vital spirits of creative imagination" by imagining himself at the lecture given by Federico Garcia Lorca in 1933, when Lorca described his concept of duende. Lorca and his notion of "dark inspiration" permeate the book, as do Rilke and his terrifying angels. Within that frame Hirsch also examines the work of Emerson, Jimi Hendrix, Whitman, Robert Motherwell, Billie Holiday, and numerous other writers, artists, and musicians.

_On the Cave You Live In_ by Philip Jenks (Flood Editions $10) To say Flannery O'Conner meets Gertrude Stein and the end product is then pruned mightily (and elegantly) is perhaps a good way of explaining this fine, odd book. Mr. Jenks is a Southern-born writer and the rhythm and concerns of the Southern soul show clear. But his style is very much the clipped style of contemporary innovative writing, coupled with a colloquialism that makes for a kind of irresistible and atmospheric poetry. Take, for example, the short poem "Kingwood, West Virginia": "Some ask to be forgiven. / Our highways collapse / into dirt coal roads. // We is driven down. // The world is cut open / like a deer is cut open." Most of the poems are longer than that, but the edge is ever-present.

_Lady One: Of Love and Other Poems_ by Breyten Breytenbach (Harcourt $23) Mr. Breytenbach is probably best known as one of the most public white South African anti-apartheid activists. He is also, according to the New Yorker, "the greatest Afrikaner poet of his generation." This new collection offers direct poems that sometimes are wildly lyrical. Primarily this is a collection of love poems to his wife, Yolande Ngo Thi Hoang Lien, but his experiences in a battle-scared nation, as well as his own exile, return and imprisonment, and exile again, contribute much to the work. An earthy richness unites his nostalgic, political poems with the sweetly devoted love poems.

_Vectors: Aphorisms & Ten-Second Essays_ by James Richardson (Ausable $14) It's a rare writer can write a good aphorism. Richardson is one of those folks who evidently think easily in this tasty and provocative form. His gathering of 500 aphorisms and mini-essays makes for a compulsive read (a book of aphorisms is like a bowl of potato chips). Here, have a few: "The road reaches every place, the short cut only one." "The cynic suffers the form of faith without its love. Incredulity is his piety." "Each lock makes two prisons." Oh, just one more -- "The mind that's too sensitive feels mostly itself. A little hardness makes us softer for others."

_A Summer Evening_ by Geoffrey Nutter (Colorado $14.95) Mr. Nutter has created a seductively dreamy book. Each poem is titled with what looks to be the time on a digital clock, i.e. "4:50," "9:42," and so on, but the poems do not occur consecutively, a disorder that is offered without explanation. The work takes place in a recognizable world, often with stated seasons and/or times of day, and there is sweetness and menace aplenty. It seems as though the lines and poems follow one another logically, but "seems" is all the glue here. Take, for example, the beginning of "9:47": "The sky puts a cardinal under its control. / And then the bike of blue air feels its increase. / There, that morning star called Lucifer is Venus being seen." The writing is this richly imagistic and musical throughout. Fans of Richard Brautigan's great book _In Watermelon Sugar_ would be comfortable in these pages.