POPCORN

“The dredge dredges sludge:/Sludge like fudge,/sludge that won’t budge,/Sludge you wouldn’t care to tudge.” With the same colorfully varied layout and attention to language that made Sweet Corn (1995) memorable, Stevenson harvests a new crop of poems. In easy language and imagery, he celebrates the sight of a crocus pushing through winter leaves, catches conversations between geese, ghosts, and rusty old tools, and remembers his dog with a poignant elegy: “Chelsea is gone./Her water bowl is dry./Her green collar lies in her empty dish.” The typeface is used in a different way on nearly every page, always in service to the poem; with an agile pen and brush, Stevenson captures people, animals, clutter (“Front yards are boring./Backyards tell stories”), and more with familiar and elegant candor. (Poetry. 8-10)