Meter and rhyme have never left the poetry world--that is, the world of real poets--and Rhina Espaillat's work is real poetry. Subtle sentences work their way gracefully over the wickets of meter. Metaphors stun with their accuracy and ingenuity. And a humane and wise voice speaks all the time, without a trace of arrogance or pretention. There is not a poetic form Ms. Espaillat attempts that she does not do honor to. How much more could one ask in our current, degraded culture of screaming and fatuousness? The only negative thing I could think to say about "Lapsing to Grace" is that as genuinely good as the book is, "Where Horizons Go," her second book, is even better.

For poetry lovers, the work of Rhina Espillat is a priceless gem just waiting to be discovered. Her use of form, her graceful passion for articulating real and heart-felt emotions is the delight every poetry lover hopes to experience from a book. Her latest book, Where Horizons Go, is equally rewarding. I strongly recommend the work of this outstanding poet to anyone who values the high principles in the gift of poetry.

Rhina Espaillat is a wonderful formal poet. I highly recommend her last book, 'Where Horizons Go.' This latest collection is easily as good. Once again she shows her mastery of meter and form (and this one is also loaded with sonnets) and she has a graceful use of language. The subject material of this collection seems to be a bit more serious.

The best I can do for this book is to briefly look at my three favorite poems. "Retriever" is a dramatic monologue where the narrator is a dog. It's a touching poem about the love and devotion of dogs towards their people. The essence is in why dogs do this: "...Why/ do I serve him? Who else would recover/treasures he's always losing? " It's a touching and humorous poem. "Unto Each Thing" takes the topic of death, and life. Where a neighbors garden blooms more beautiful the spring their child died. We like to think that life and beauty in the face of death can help. But "too much, smell wearied, skin recoiled/from silk and velvet leaves to touch", and Rhina shows us it does not. The final stanza really sticks with you:

and mind ached with the gardener's back
bent to the clacking of old shears
over big, heavy-breasted blossoms
gathering earthward like slow tears.

"Three Versions" is a poem where the narrator dreams her own death. It contains lines such as: "I settled in the mould, but begged them to/take word of me to those my death would wrong" and "I woke to the third day's inhuman chill,/rank with the scent of mould. I smell it still."

This collection spends a lot of time delving into death and other more serious concerns not seen as much in her earlier collections.

After reading this collection of poems, poets everywhere may well envy those who live in Rhina Espaillat's home town in Massachusetts, because that is where she presides over the monthly workshops of The Powow River Poets. Espaillat's poems have a way of speaking directly to each person listening: a rare gift.

But she has many gifts: wit; ready intimacy; a natural understanding of the strange, the erratic, and the commonplace; the ability to translate those for others; keen vision into things, people, processes and events; a broad intellectual background upon which palimpsest her poems take form; and the kindness to share all of these with others.

Since the penultimate on that list brings up the subject of the visual arts, it's tempting to think of her husband's sculpture as a complement to her formalist poems, which have a three-dimensionality about them. On the other hand, Espaillat's poems may comprise more than three dimensions: at times, they approach the five-dimensional.

In "Negations," for example, she hits upon eternity and its simultaneous nonexistence:

as if your days were plates of summer fruit
that you may wash and quarter, core and pare
for guests, until you notice they've gone mute,
gone home for good, if they were ever there.

The final line is both ironic and blissful, a combination that comes as naturally to Espaillat as rhyme and elegance.

"On Being Accused of Optimism after Predicting Good Weather" is especially musical, and delights with lines like

"how calibrations country people learn
to make, measure the thinning of the air;"

her "overcast/ with unspent weather" dovetails perfectly with the final line, "forgetting what I meant, or meant to say."

"Practice" honors the divine gift of making all children one's own, as well as the gift for storytelling. The sly ironies of "Enjoy Your Meal!" (an "insincere" message from her microwave) stand in jovial counterpoint to the blunt truths there.

"Minefields" is a powerhouse. It can bring tears; perhaps the themes of deep friendship, the road, children and war are the mélange that does it. Incredibly, this poet can juxtapose a tragic youthful death with children banging on lids; but the din is part of the WWII remembrance, as well. She writes, "We always make it. Having come this far / we count on destinations."

There is an echo of Samuel Beckett in Four O'Clock": one line there may hold the whole ("the landscape only seems to stay"). This, again, speaks of the meaningfulness of ephemera. It opens:

The eye, uncertain, almost sees
a luminescence through bare trees
rotating by minute degrees,

and ends:

"that time is an imperfect sum.
Nothing to do but let it come,
whatever light, wherever from."

This is Rhina Espaillat's fourth collection of poems. The second, Where Horizons Go, won the TS Eliot Prize in 1998; this book, Rehearsing Absence, won the Richard Wilbur Prize for 2001. John Frederick Nims awarded her the Nemerov Prize for one of her sonnets, and neo-formalist poetry and its adherents have grown much the richer for her lyrical gifts, high craftsmanship, and inspirational beacon.

Anyone who has ever gone to a grandmother or a beloved aunt for comfort or advice will recognize this still, small voice that speaks with such authority and grace.

"Where Horizons Go" is a must-have for any serious contemporary poetry collection. The anatomically and politically correct "Bra" alone is worth the price of the book:

If only the heart could be worn like the breast, divided,
nosing in two directions for news of the wide world,
sniffing here and there for justice, for mercy.

You won't regret this purchase.

Sonnets, villanelles, formal poetry of all types are found in Ehina Espaillat's first collection. Her poems aren't constricted or artificial, but come out with an elegance not often seen in poets today. Every poem in this collection is evidence that she loves language, poetry, and the challenge that comes in writing in rhyme and meter. The subjects of her poems range widely, though there does seem to be a high ratio of poems about poetry. There is also an interesting essay at the end of the collection that discusses growing up bilingual (Espaillat is from the Dominican Republic, and Spanish is her native tongue), which leads into a discussion of the beauty of language. Both the poems and the essay make this a book to treasure.

I've taught Rhina's work for the last two years at a small northeastern college, and the students respond to her as to no one else. They understand her work and love it, and when they're not sure, she intrigues them mightily. You cannot go wrong with "Where Horizons Go."ÿ