Appetites

Though it might not be yet apparent, what the world hungers for--not just the poetry world but all sentient beings--are the rapturous, precise, lyrical revelations in Charles Rafferty's Appetites, a startling collection full of poems that chart desire through an abandoned couch transformed into redeeming ecstasy, that channel the "popcorned and sawdusty air" of the circus tent where folks gather to turn away from themselves, that show us the subversive art of souvenir-taking in the form of a sliver of Picasso's signature smuggled under a fingernail, and that give us a "Prelude" for our time. In the vein of Stephen Dobyns and Denis Johnson, but ever original and even more expertly-crafted, Rafferty is a major American poet. If you don't know his work yet, you owe yourself this chapbook. --Ravi Shankar