Ghost, Like a Place Poems

In his sophomore effort, Pollock (Spit Back a Boy) gathers awide range of direct, plainspoken lyrics that deal with childhood,family, rural life and beauty, human (and boyish) cruelty, and newfoundfatherhood. These poems directly and indirectly tie these themes tolarger issues of societal violence, race, and gender. Pollock tells of agroup of boys, the speaker among them, throwing stones at a dying rat:”In that hour/ or the next, the thing/ must have died, killed/ not byus–mercy.” Elsewhere, he envisions a still-living Tamir Rice playing agame of basketball with his son–“Heavy going-down/ sun. Heavy, heavy(glinting) going-down sun”–and runs through elements of the life anddeath of Louis Armstrong, writing from the perspective of his subject:”I’m not telling this straight:/ depending on the folks in front of me.”Some of the most direct encounters with political themes feelshoehorned in; for example, a poem that begins with the speaker watchingTai Chi practitioners and fisherman along a river ends abruptly, “Andthe Black boys/ of Philadelphia, this summer,/ one gunned down eachday.” Despite a feeling of incompleteness in the work, Pollock deliversmoments of levity, lyric beauty, and a creeping melancholy that lend hiswork its distinct atmosphere.