Since the publication of Hazmat , a book about the life of the body—short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize—J. D. McClatchy’s poetry has increasingly taken up the life of the soul. Now in verse as quicksilver as it is authoritative, he returns to themes he has touched on before, but from a new or unusual perspective—focusing on the frame rather than the picture, the tear rather than the sorrow.

The title poem captures the nervous energy and aloneness surrounding the figure of Mercury, while the stunning long poem “Sorrow in 1944” tells the tale of the grown child of Madame Butterfly. McClatchy’s impulse is to tell the story after the story, the minor opera in the shadows of a great one that nonetheless tells its own tale of the heart, bearing its own measure of tragedy and hope.

With its emotional range, maturity, and formal elegance, Mercury Dressing is the finest work to date from one of our most significant poets.

Mercury Dressing

To steal a glance and, anxious, see

Him slipping into transparency—

The feathered helmet already in place,

Its shadow fallen across his face

(His hooded sex its counterpart)—

Unsteadies the routines of the heart.

If I reach out and touch his wing,

What harm, what help might he then bring?

But suddenly he disappears,

As so much else has down the years . . .

Until I feel him deep inside

The emptiness, preoccupied.

His nerve electrifies the air.

His message is his being there.