<DIV><P>Treating subjects from landscape to sculpture to a 19th century technical encyclopedia, the poet is fascinated with light, glass, mirrors, flame, ice, mercury&mdash;things transparent, evanescent, impossible to grasp. Likewise Swensen&rsquo;s lyrics, which, with elliptical phrasing and play between visual and aural, change the act of seeing&mdash;and reading&mdash;offering glimpses of the spirit (or ghost) that enters a poem where the rational process breaks down.</P><P>From &ldquo;The Invention of Streetlights&rdquo;</P><P>Certain cells, it&rsquo;s said, can generate light on their own.<BR>There are organisms that could fit on the head of a pin.<BR>and light entire rooms. .<BR>Throughout the Middle Ages, you could hire a man.<BR>on any corner with a torch to light you home.<BR> were lamps made of horn.<BR>and from above a loom of moving flares, we watched.<BR>Notre Dame seem small. .<BR>Now the streets stand still. .<BR>By 1890, it took a pound of powdered magnesium.<BR>to photograph a midnight ball.</P><P>&ldquo;<I>Goest</I>, sonorous with a hovering &lsquo;ghost&rsquo; which shimmers at the root of all things, is a stunning meditation&mdash;even initiation&mdash;on the act of seeing, proprioception, and the alchemical properties of light as it exists naturally and inside the human realm of history, lore, invention and the &lsquo;whites&rsquo; of painting. Light becomes the true mistress and possibly the underlying language of all invention. Swensen&rsquo;s poetry documents a penetrating &lsquo;intellectus&rsquo;&mdash;light of the mind&mdash;by turns fragile, incandescent, transcendent.&rdquo;&mdash;Anne Waldman</P></DIV>