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Title: Radiant Sadness
Review: Each poem in *Atonement* is perfectly poised and fits inevitably into its form. The central situation in many of the poems is the moment of first flowering--into adult experience, love, sexuality, a new consciousness--which moment is repeated and rehearsed like an archetype. A Nicaraguan woman is raped by a stranger while her husband cuts sugar cane; it is a half desired violation. In "The Babysitter," two girls mimic their teenage sitter's immature sexual antics while her two charges watch, and then later parody her, anticipating their adult lives.These are lovingly preserved cries from a voice most don't hear or can't hear. They put the reader back in the world of possibility with a tenderness so fine and surely shaped that the reader can feel "the swell of moonlight, / and the chill under the separate eaves, / pure white and choked with love." The title poem is a concentration of the whole collection, which glimmers with radiant sadness and often pain. A strikingly affecting book.
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