THE NEVER WIFE

Poetry. "I drive into an August tropic rain./ The road's behind a waterfall and I'm/ hunched squinting like a crone/ for signs. Ghosts mark time ..." (Moving to New Orleans, 1991). "I am moved by Ms. Hogue's apparent knowledge of people, and by her ability to present them convincingly in her poems. This is a quality all too rare in contemporary poetry, characterized as it is by a nearly universal self-absorption. There is wisdom here, and acute observation of the human situation"--John Haines.