Blues for Unemployed Secret Police

From Booklist
Anderson is quite different from two other, better-known Vietnam poets, Bruce Weigl and W. D. Ehrhart--more universal than the intimate Weigl, more populist than the radical Ehrhart. He hasn't published as much as his peers; this is only his second collection. If he needed time to hone these powerful, funny-horrific, brutal-tender poems, though, be glad he took it. Anderson has learned hard facts that he relays indelibly. The title poem is the monologue of a South African Special Branch member who is now fleeing the country confidently, for "A good torturer can always find a job." Anderson elsewhere depicts an "Oedipus Blind," who may be properly repentant but proudly recalls his rapture with Jocasta: "You cannot know what this was like. / The smell of her." A pair of Neruda-inspired poems conjures the partnership-conspiracy of "Coyote" and "Crows." Anderson's "Homage to Pound" is genuine but poses the impolite question: "Mad? How about guilty." This is all no-nonsense stuff. Ray Olson


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