Poet: Carol Berge
Book: "An American Romance" Copyright 1969
ISBN: PS 3552. E716. A8 c.2
Available at NMSU's Zuhl Library

There's little that's axiomatic about her work--no stark epigrams in the service of some omniscient (or at least uber-cognizant) speaker.  Instead the voice flows naturally from a weaving of the daily profundity of being with somebody so that Berge achieves an earnestness, aware only of its own baggage and the implications of the "Romance" in question.  Readers of "An American Romance" will find that its poems rarely revel in scenery; rather, the positioning of the poem's tension concerns a limbic area between the speaker and the romantic other with whom she wishes to connect.  Because of this, the language of the poetry often evokes an aural intimacy--perhaps by dint of its tandem of opacity/closeness.
Participating with Berge's speakers here is like hearing a loved one talking to you or someone of concern through a wall.  And there's definitely an arc to the dialogue the reader overhears, with love poems beginning in a jovial, almost naively warm place that is gradually shaded over by complication; and as hackneyed as this arc may seem in terms of depicting romance, Berge pulls it off.  I recommend this collection for its craft and refreshing warmth.  And as mentioned earlier its earnest voice salts it with a lack of pretension.  Check it out.      

Here's a short sample:

The Loving

Turning it aside with your hand,
saying: you do not like
those things that tremble.
But it is the softer beasts
who, walking through your life
perhaps furred or
glistening like humans,
having given you sustenance...
The loving
is contained firmly in you,
in the beautiful
bones of muscles of you,
cupping the gentleness
holding it safe...
You go to some private room
to tremble; to give love...