Sugar

Cohen (The Sorrow Apartments) offers spare reflections on grief, memory, inheritance, and spirit in her economical and exacting ninth collection. The title poem, which explores the fallibility of memory, paints a lively portrait of a night out drinking in the 1980s (“you could still/ smoke in bars then you could/ still go home with six cartons/ of smoke in your hair”). The speaker later realizes she wasn’t actually present on this night, and that she only remembered hearing about it secondhand, raising questions about what it really means to remember. In the best entries, every word is essential. Elsewhere, the brevity can be a little overdone (“Breaking News” reads in full: “We were al-/ ready broken”), but those who enjoy haiku and Zen koans will appreciate the frank simplicity. It is hard, for example, not to be charmed by the opening lines of “Wax,” in which Cohen is at her most philosophical and sly: “A ball of wax/ is the whole/ ball of wax,/ no matter/ how small.” Though short, the poems are expansive in the imagery and ideas they evoke, and consistently clever in their execution. It’s a worthy addition to Cohen’s acclaimed body of work. (Mar.)