Sleeping with Houdini

From Publishers WeeklyAndrews' sixth book consists entirely of frank, charming, short, and very readable prose poems. The first and best describe girlhood and growing up; most of the rest describe erotic attachment, romantic longing, lust and sex. Andrews has made these topics her special field (her best-known prior work is The Book of Orgasms), and readers who go in search of them will find plenty: "a lady with 27 orgasms," she argues, "would have to be a ravaging sort," especially since "the penis, I've determined, should never be overrated." A lighthearted concluding sequence takes up American ideas of France, spinning variations on its big words (such as jouissance), its sophistication, and its lovers' allure. A feminist comedian of the sexual body, Andrews is also a sincere poet of regret: "all those lies trapped inside us like a silent movie we'd keep on living in just as long as we could." More sophisticated readers who find her poems of adulthood less than surprising may nonetheless be moved by the recollections and inventions in which Andrews presents tableaux of youth: "I wanted to be Elizabeth.... What if I was?" she remembers asking. "What if I was given the wrong name? And now Elizabeth was living my life, dreaming my dreams, wearing my things."