Richard Sanger's CALLING HOME

Richard Sanger's second collection is more assured than Shadow Cabinet, the voice frequently declarative and reveling in its own irony or waywardness. The shaping and unfolding of the various narratives repeats the historical-personal juxtaposition and transposition of his opening volume, but Calling Home is scored with greater depth in a number of fine poems which (I'd wager) become impatient with using social anecdotes as personal parallel, instead creating a closer identification between character(s), speaker, and reader: "Fashion Notes From Paris", "Dispatch", "High Park". The backside contains a few negligible reminiscences, much slighter set pieces that were perhaps inserted as a filling coda or as a tentative desire to unmask multiple personae.