I FEEL A LITTLE JUMPY AROUND YOU

A remarkable anthology, though not for its gender gimmick—his and her poems collected in tandem by his and her anthologists with separate introductions and even separate indexes to male and female poets. Often the pairings seem subjective even while the poems themselves shine with universality; and the sheer variety—only a fraction by poets who are even relatively familiar—is extraordinary. There are powerful and fascinating poems about crushes, kisses (his, visceral; hers, romantic), roots, guilt, memory and the influence of the past (``the heart remembers home and will make you walk water to find it''), and grief. There are stunning selections about daughters and mothers (``something is moving/in the water./she is the hook./i am the line''); fathers; brothers and sisters; boys ``having moved on naturally from zapping/ants with a magnifying glass, to disfiguring/toy soldiers with a woodburning kit'' and girls ``bearing supper,/our heads on fire.'' With moments of fierce humor (``Emily Dickinson's To-Do List'') and true communion (``I will/ try to wait for you,/on your side of things''), this is a wonder, whatever it has to say (or doesn't) about men and women. (Poetry. 12+)