Poet's Choice

Heather McHugh is a Radcliffe grad in cowboy boots. Her witty poems shift gears from Okie slow to spaceship speed. A translator from many tongues, she loves a pun, even when mourning a dead pooch.

But O the family dog, the Buddha-dog -- son of a bitch!

he had a funny bone --

A philosophy major, McHugh is fascinated by perception, how the world enters us streaming on light through the eye. "The Size of Spokane" begins with the banality of a nerve-wracking toddler jetting up and down an airplane aisle:

The baby isn't cute. In fact he's

a homely little pale and headlong

stumbler. . . .

and when he passes my seat twice

at full tilt this then that direction,

I look down from Lethal Weapon 3 to see

just why.

The baby is running through light spilling from the portholes, and the poet reminds us that "everyone was/sunstruck once." But so habitual are our perceptions that we forget to be amazed. The poem works to unpractice our senses and snap us awake.