The Bob and Weave Jim Peterson. Red Hen (CDC, dist.), $16.95 (120p) ISBN 1-888996-65-X
Jim Peterson’s poems are filled with the things of this world– its horses, hands, stones, and baseball players–but are not themselves its inhabitants. Rather, this poet moves in a realm where “there is / a space between him and the world and he / tunes it like one string of a violin.” Equally committed to nature, to spirit, to dreams, and to the touch of another human body, Peterson constantly expects “a message / from something that isn’t me / or even like me.” The tensions evolving from this anticipation are by turns erotic, mysterious, and instructively frightening.