Human Animal

One can only admire the sweep of Anne Becker's new collection of poems, Human Animal. The reader is immediately caught in its interminglings: of gods and world; of world and earth; of people, and of people with earth and animals. Examples abound. In "Forces of Nature," Becker states, "Questions like: do angels have wings, these are the kinds of things / we demand answers to." In "Forces of Nature II," she tells us, "We, and the earth we walk on / are never at rest. . . ." In "Wolf Woman," she evokes someone "halfway, between animal and human animal. . . ." Becker does not shy away from encounters with the universe that brought forth the human animal.

The book is filled with surprises and reversals. In "Getting Wisdom: The Denial," a mother imagines a Chinese basket to be a waste basket. Yet, her four-year-old son imagines the exact opposite, "This is a saving basket." So, the basket is filled with "bits of paper . . . / scribbled notes, pretend money, twigs, / broken feathers, single beads,"--all to be saved.

The ultimate reversal is that Becker shows no reluctance to exemplify wisdom, straying from current fashion. In the final section, "Still, the Good Body," she casts a cold--and at the same time a hot--eye on love, offering a candid image: the body leads the way to love, the human animals' only resting place. See poems like "The Old Loving" and the final poem, "Heartwork II," which ends where all acts of love end, "Enough effort--we can rest here. / Enough happiness for one day."

Anne Becker's Human Animal leaves the reader with the feeling, Yes, yes, it is this way Along with Yes, yes . . ., we feel a wonder at the mystery that it is in fact this way. And we discover that all of life for human animals is a series of astonishing reversals, birth to death. This is a serious book by a serious author.