Talking cures

The author's narrators, famous and imaginary, experience an unburdening of sorts in these poems. The imperturbable James Merrill and the outspoken Alice Neel make appearances, as do Henry James, Willa Cather, and Joseph Conrad, participants in a ghostly roundtable in which writers critique movies. Howard maintains a Wildesque humor throughout this clever yet bittersweet volume, especially in the sequence titled "Phallacies," in which he makes gleeful fun of the form, function, and vulnerability of the male organ. Then in "Five Communications," a hilarious yet poignant exchange between two Americans who purchased software meant to translate a dog's bark and the Japanese company that produced it, he considers the impossibility of ever being truly understood. So much is lost in transmission and translation, the poet muses, so much is misunderstood, and yet we persist in beating back silence.