CORN-FED

Despite the title, Stevenson’s latest corncatenation of poems and pictures, or at least its second half, has an urban flavor, from buses full of children “[l]ooking for the universe” pulling up to the Hayden Planetarium to “I love dawn, / Especially with / New York City / under it” paired to a skyline. His loose, sketchy, watercolor vignettes capture their subjects’ essence as masterfully as ever, and repeatedly demonstrate his fondness for both the familiar (a ketchup bottle, a pigeon) and the inscrutable: what is that odd hoop attached to the curb? What are those big, complicated rail-yard machines? The terse, cornversational poetry may sometimes be inscrutable itself without the picture—“The sign on the restaurant window / makes you wonder, / Is this a boast, / Or a warning?” (The sign reads: “All baking done on premises.”) But readers overwhelmed by the recent tsunami of daffy, clever verse will find the reflective, faintly elegiac tone here a cornsiderable relief and a different reason to smile. (Poetry. 7-10)