Bill Hughes writes hypnotic fever dreams of night-bound cities, of dark nights of the soul spent in "The Rue Morgue Arcades." These linked and lyrical poems ósuch as "Hinterland Stations," which moves through a calendar yearótake the reader to deserted and desolate places "... where the pupil of Edward Hopper's eye / casts its spell / in a beam of layers." Even when the poet ventures into daylight, as in "Lake the Drowsy Noon," the scene and mood remain eerily and unsettlingly beautiful; Hughes evokes a landscape in which "... no one notices a house / While gravity swarms its sieve'

Poetry.