BIRDS OF SAN PANCHO AND OTHER POEMS OF PLACE

Many of the 74 poems in this, Day’s seventh full-length collection, appeared in literary journals; two were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. The collection’s two parts, “Foreigner” and “Between the Two Shining Seas,” signal its organizing theme of travel, abroad and domestic. Day’s background in biology and zoology informs the collection’s sense of place. In the title poem, for example, the speaker’s knowledge adds nuance to a scene: “Later, at the lagoon, a great blue heron, / a little blue heron, a green heron, / a night heron.” The poet’s craft links these images through recurring sounds like later/lagoon/blue, emphasizing the moment’s wholeness. Many of the pieces delight in color; in “Water Lilies,” the poet “enter[s] the painting” to participate directly in Monet’s hues of pink, yellow, blue-green, gray, white, purple, and red. In other poems, Day movingly mourns for injuries to nature and people. “Names of the States,” for example, is a litany of the dispossession: Texas means “ ‘friends’ or ‘allies’ in the language of the Caddos, / who were removed to Oklahoma in 1859.” Some of the strongest pieces consider grief. In “Come Back,” the speaker says she wants her daughter to behave in every annoying, worrisome way. Only the last lines state her heartbreaking condition: “but this time / you have to live.” The often poignant mood of the collection is somewhat undercut, however, when read against the many depictions of far-flung leisure travel. In the wistful final poem, “Going,” the speaker says her dreams included “a better vacation,” but it’s hard to imagine much better vacations than the ones she describes.

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