User's Guide

I first became aware of Judith Pacht's work when I edited a collection of poems in honor of James Wright, From the Other World: Poems in Memory of James Wright. Her contribution to that book is a haunting venture into the mind of a young girl contemplating time and her own identity. In her new poetry collection, User's Guide, Pacht achieves the feat of satirizing that modern genre, the user's guide and owner's manual, while at the same time moving touchingly into the land of human longings. Here is the end of a short piece, ostensibly from the manual accompanying "Circulation-Enhancing Travel Socks":

   you   a gem-like damsel
   float with the dragon-flies on Lily Lake   flashing
   your iridescent belly   flicking
   your impossibly thin needle-legs

   skating into summer

 User's Guide, a chapbook published by Finishing Line Press, is filled with humor, wonder, and humanity. It is available at Amazon.com, and I encourage my gather friends to check it out.