Beth Anne Royer’s Radio Dreams

I’m often refreshed by poets who can handle humor effortlessly, especially when they know how to balance their tonal range through sequencing, as Beth Anne does: at times the poems are subdued and deadpan in their humor, at times situational where much hinges on a fabulous last line, sort of like a punch line, but better. I particularly liked “In this way, the business of pleasure went on in the dark” and “There I was, smiling like a slut, and I hadn’t even granted an interview.” Those were lines from two of my favorite poems; I also loved the Whitman ones. Beth Anne was a fellow “younger poet” back at Bucknell in 2000, and it was nice to see some poems from those workshops, like the poems about a certain bicycle named Mildred.