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Nathaniel Tarn. Ins and Outs of the Forest Rivers. 2008. 102 pp.

Here's another New Directions imprint. I'm ashamed to say I didn't know Tarn's poetry before now, although the name has been familiar to me for many many years as a translator of Neruda. I have a problem with poets who aren't stylists. Poets whom I can't appreciate at the level of the word, the phrase, the line. I understand Tarn's Rilkean imagination in a poem like "Of the Animal." I see a blurb from Hayden Carruth--another poet I cannot appreciate at the stylistic level. So that makes sense: I probably miss Tarn the same way I miss Carrruth. My radio doesn't pick up that frequency; I get a lot of garrulous static, too much noise and not enough information.