Joan Lauri Poole

Bed of Crimson Joy: Poems Joan Lauri Poole

Like the seal in Elizabeth Bishop's "At the Fishhouses," Poole is a believer in "total immersion." Her poems plumb the fleshy depths--be they a body of water, the movement of a willow, a field combed by light, or the beguiling pigments in a Rembrandt. Although the poems' surfaces appear to be about the death of a sister, a painting by Bonnard, or a naked statue of Hermes, their ultimate focus is on interiority. The speaker of these poems shudders, tenses, is secreted away by the physicality of the world, and in the process is ravished and ravishing.