And, for Example (Poets, Penguin)

Offers a collection of poetry expressing the author's perceptions of life

Lauterbach divides her fifth collection into three sections. The first contains freestanding poems in which images transform--wild garments changing into lacerating stone within two lines, journal pages mutating quickly into bandages for the dying, air becoming a sleeveless shirt. The second section, "For Example," is fittingly prefaced by an epigraph from John Ashbery, "These are examples of leaving out"; thereafter, in a series of interconnected poems, Lauterbach attempts to present a story by stringing together thoughts and actions representing what is left out. In large part, she succeeds, putting a spin on tale-telling by including only elements of detail rather than a linear plot. The third section, "Ashes, Ashes," contains dedication and memorial poems, the best of them a long piece for Henri Matisse in which Lauterbach takes on the painter's persona to deliver first-person observations that flow and overlap much as his paintings' colors appear on canvas. In terms of lyrical language, Lauterbach sets a great example. Elizabeth Gunderson