Saleem Peeradina. Heartâs Beast: New and Selected Poems. New Delhi. Copper Coin. 2017. 166 pages. As a publication format, the ânew and selected poemsâ allows a poetâs corpus to grow incrementally and retrospectively at the same time, with each new collection adding a group of recent, uncollected poems to a selection from previous books. It gives poets an opportunity to remain in print, although one offset by the challenge of self-assessment and self-revision. Despite the title, Saleem Peeradinaâs latest collection does not include any new (i.e., unpublished) poems but a comprehensive and sensible selection from his five previous books, featuring half of First Offence (1980), Group Portrait (1992), and Slow Dance (2010), a little less than half of Meditations on Desire (2003), and less than 25 percent of Final Cut (2016). However, since most of these books were published outside of India, the selection is effectively new for the subcontinental readers who represent its intended audience. And it may even help ârectify [its authorâs] neglectâ in his native country, as Keki Daruwalla advocates in the foreword, or at least reintroduce a poet who is often remembered mostly, and somewhat reductively , in connection with an influential and still relevant anthology. The militant editor of Contemporary Indian Poetry in English: An Assessment and Selection (1972) would become the angry young man of First Offence, whose free-verse probing pronouncements, charged with an inquisitive energy, lead occasionally to a devotional stance, as with the prayerful endings of âBandraâ (the old Bombay neighborhood), âThere Is No God,â and âThe Real Thing.â With time, and the experience of relocation to the United States, this poetic stance undergoes a process of sublimation, becoming evocative rather than invocatory. What is called on is not the deity (in its various incarnations ) but the dead, or time past (and passing). Thirty years after âBandra,â âThe Old Neighborhoodâ (from Slow Dance) employs the second person to describe a chance encounter with an old friend rather than to engage the plurality and diversity of the Bombay/Mumbai suburb in a verbal close-up. While Group Portrait represents the record of a passage (from one world to another, from youth to maturity, from individual to family life, and from free verse to more measured, stanzaic forms), Slow Dance is a reflection on this experience and its many adjustments and reassessments. It is a long and difficult process of selfexamination and self-discovery, forged by the daily exercise of âallowing pain / to preserve the distance / which welds our world togetherâ (âGroup Portraitâ) and leading to an understanding, and acceptance, that âRemaining whole is no longer the point: / Itâs staying divided, attaining equipoiseâ (âMichigan Basement 2â). As the poetâs view evolves from the panoramic to the personal and the particular , his stance becomes more reflective, his stanzas more composed, and his lines longer. In Final Cut, Peeradinaâs cameraeye remains sharp and inquisitive but with a more circumscribed range, focusing on realities that areâmetaphorically and literally âcloser to home: birds observed in the backyard, objects of everyday use, exotic fruits, and the âearly settlersâ that, âentering the bloodstream bearing / Gifts from their twin lineages,â will eventually take us down. Although published in India, Heartâs Beastâs selection will suit and gratify any anglophone reader with more than a passing interest in well-crafted, perceptive, and thought-provoking poetry. Graziano Krätli North Haven, Connecticut Leona Sevick. Lion Brothers. WinstonSalem , North Carolina. Press 53. 2017. 63 pages. Lion Brothers, Leona Sevickâs first fulllength poetry collection, is named for the textile factory where the poetâs Korean mother worked. While the collection is, in part, about the poetâs working-class parents, it is also a profound exploration of domestic life and its discontents. âI have something to tell you,â a seemingly benign sentence, is the emotional whirlpool around which Lion Brothers swirls. In its first speaking, the sentence is World Literature in Review 84 WLT SEPTEMBERâOCTOBER 2017 directed to the poetâs mother by her husband , the poetâs father. In the second, it is directed to the poet-speaker by her own husband, and, both times, it is a prologue to...