I've been reading Sarah Manguso's Siste Viator. It's a good book, very similar to The Captain Lands in Paradise. She favors the disjunctive, elliptical poem. But there is a strong "I" at the center of most of them. And a good sense of humor, that I admire. Like a more reader-friendly version of Jorie Graham.

Here's a taste:


Will We?

My favorite euphemism for death is the future.

Vermeer's kitchen maid is not the most famous painting in the Rijksmuseum even though she pours her milk perfectly and milk poured no more slowly then than it does now.

In Cleveland, Aunt Jean offers me a Vantage and teaches me a game of solitaire called The Queen Goes Into the Woods.

The older I get, the more I am able to discard.

Will we never live together in the round house?


*


Better to Shed No Light on the Mystery Than to Shed Bad Light

The zeros gather on the hill and start to bleat:

If I'm not a one, what am I?

Come here, little zero!
and together we can invent one.

I can bury my face in your soft wool.

Wooly zero, someday I will make a coat of you!


*


It's a slim volume (only 60 pages) with beautiful design and cover, from Four Way Books.