STARS WITH FLAMING TAILS

A compact gathering of new verse on diverse topics, from a British poet born in Jamaica.

Within thematic groupings, Bloom writes of children newly born or bored (“Family and Friends”), of erupting volcanoes (“Our World”), of extinct animals (“Animals”), and of dreams (“Unbelievable?”). In the family section, a child muses on her parents, who are apparently at odds: “They say that they’ll always / Love me forever. / I only wish / They could love me together.” Another section, titled “Fun With Forms,” offers samples of an elfje and of skeltonic verse among more familiar constructions—but, alas, there is no explication of these. Though her casual approach to rhyming and metrics does result in some stumbles (“Once I held inside my palms / the curviness of a bow, / and listened in the cornfield / to the sadness of a scarecrow”), the selections offer a range of moods and some choice wordplay to boot, like this from “Praying Mantis”: “Before a meal, what it will say / Is not ‘Bless this food’ but ‘Let us prey’.” The child on the cover and many of the human figures in the illustrations that accompany nearly every poem are people of color. Outside of anthologies, very little of the veteran poet’s work has made it to the States, so count this for most U.S. readers an unjustly tardy introduction.

Tender to tongue-in-cheek, a broad showcase for a versatile writer.