What You Hear in the Dark: New and Selected Poems - Gernes, Sonia. University of Notre Dame Press, 2006. 169p. $20.00, paperback. ISBN-10: 0-268-02968-7. ISBN-13: 978-0-268-02968-5. 811’.54 Poetry.

Poetry has power—power to inspire, power to transport us to other times and places, power to pierce our minds with new thoughts that challenge and thoughts that link our experiences with those of the poet. Readers who enjoy poems in which words rhyme and march to metered cadence may be stretched to appreciate What You Hear in the Dark. But most readers, regardless of preferences in poetry styles, will find this collection worth reading and pondering. Sonia Gernes offers two sections of new poems along with selected poems from her previous collections. Themes include nature, loneliness, aging, Alzheimer’s, travel, and seasons, among others. Every word counts as Gernes paints these mental portraits.

In “The Pyramid at Cholula,” Gernes writes of the “double calendar of desire and time,” and closes the poem with “the X that equals God.” Described as “metaphysical,” these poems are not what many would call religious, though the themes, fears, feelings, and hopes expressed succinctly and poignantly will prompt receptive minds to respond, “Ah, yes. That’s how it is,” or “Me too.”

Recommended for serious students of poetry.

Carolyn Egolf