shards that make up our universe. Suffused with heartfelt and steely observations, thepoems ricochet off our fears and emotions, simultane ously deepening our passion forthat which makes us human. Now, with his second collection, Slate cements his reputation as a keen participant in the human experiment, though his registerembraces theprivate and personal iconography more than ever. The title's metaphoric wave doesn't crash but rolls gently over the landscape of memory and uncer tainty. In "Meditation by the Sea," Slate-the-poet reexamines Slate-the traveling-businessman, wondering what he had missed while being away. He doubts the results-driven, ephemeral nature of his existence. He finds himself asking, "Should I trytohear / above theroar,or speak to it,/ or against it?" In "Cocoanut Grove," which commemorates the victims?including thepoet's grand mother and her sister?of thedeadli est nightclub firein thenation's his tory,thepoet's voice shiftsbetween guilt, sensationalizing, and remem brance.With a few lines togo before RED ROVER theend,we sense theechoing reality of another tragic event: "So now it's time todecide how to move /within spaces on the sites of catastrophe, / how to regard the atria and the lob bies, // even as the alarms sound." The ensuing chaos, even if filtered through thehearsay of childhood, is never farfrom thepoet facinga del uge ofbad news, as in the title poem, where he says "but Iwould choose thewave over thewind, / Iwould swamp your world with wreckage, / Iwould hold fast toyou, and you would be saved." Like the restof us, the speaker of these fine-tunedpoems is "just a commuter," but that is exactly what makes him believable. We can be grateful for the invitation to come along on this journey, and thenext, wherever it might lead. Piotr Florczyk Wilmington, Delaware Susan Stewart. Red Rover. Chicago. University of Chicago Press.2008. x + 105 pages. $22. isbn978-0-226-77454-1 To pick up Susan Stewart's latest volume of poems and begin to read is to enter an enchanted place of childlike trustand imaginative force, tempered and unsettled by thedis locations of adult experience. The central metaphor of the collection is the outwardly carefreeworld of children playing, whose innocence is belied by the dark underside of aggressive impulse and thought. In this world, the child breezily calling out the taunt "red rover, red rover / come over, come over" to fellow play mates in thebook's titlepoem isnot simply observing the rules and ritu als of play but is also unconsciously putting on themantle of adult con trolwith itspotential for violence: "That was how / you first met the god / of permissions. . . .But you ^^^J didn't know thatyet." ^^^H An analogue to this magic realm ^^^H of children's play is the transforma- ^^^H tive world of imagination.The poem "shadowplay" evokes thepower of artisticplay to reconfigure reality: "I made a fist/ and itgrew two ears, / long ears with / a mumbling / mouth. Then / I opened my hand? itgrew / four feathers/ and another ^^^H hand / rose tomeet it." In a dark- ^^^J ened room the silhouette of a hand ^^^J morphs into a rabbit,which flick- ^^^J ers into a pair of blackbirds whose flightfrom the room abruptly emp- ^^^J ties itof form and light.The poem "tag," which breezily considers the ^^^J imaginary, fluctuating loci of safety and danger in a children's running ^^^J game, also introduces the refrain ^^^H "time stops," which becomes the ^^^H haunting seal of a subsequent poem, ^^^J Stewart's poignant elegy forthe2006 ^^^H murder of ten Amish schoolgirls: "where time has stopped / where time has slowed / the horses wear the rain." The poems exploring the reso nant metamorphoses of children's play are themost memorable of this ^^^J uneven assemblage, which ranges froma discouraging number of her- ^^^H metically oblique academic pieces to a more accessible, engaging selec- ^^^H tion of nature poems. Among the ^^^H most arresting of these is a pair ^^^H about birds. In "Wrens," thespeaker ^^^H watches thebirds' quicksilver dart- ^^^J ing and muses that such stunning life force couldn't be limited to this ^^^J planet alone: "I would not / lose them / could not lose / themknow ^^^J / ifthere's / another /place another ^^^H /world another...