Good morning, good morning. Just dipping into Mary Jo Bang's latest, The Eye Like a Strange Balloon. A book of ekphrasis poems but much livelier than that would suggest, and not just because many of the poems seem to riff off films and cartoons as well as paintings. Her language is so musical it's almost a soundtrack to the paratactical succession of images that pop, pop, pop, like in a Bjork video. Moving, too. The end of "Three Trees":

The day is dragged here and there but still
can't be saved. BAM. Immediately
the next second clicks nto the skyscape
apocalypse. In the dust, a celluloid woman
mows a multilayered lawn.
The arch overhead reads, O Art
Still Has Truth Take Refuge. Where? There.
There, there, says someone.

Mary Jo is major, and a major delight. Read, read.