Playwright, director, and nonfiction writer Swados, who won three Obie Awards and received five Tony nominations, veers in a new direction with her first poetry collection. In a tribute to escape artist Houdini, the lines are often simple and direct: "My wife practices a backbend/ outside this cheap room,/ its ripped screen door." But Swados has delved deeply into the psychological core of the performer, "Sleek and naked,/ I will defy the/ pain of human nerves." Sometimes the phrasing is awkward, "I, the artist, hang above you/ from my feet/ fifteen stories up." But Swados examines her subject from many angles: family, relational, cultural, the audience's perspective, and the artist's own. Even Arthur Conan Doyle has a conversation with Houdini in one poem, warning him, "To reach into another world/ requires intimacy with darkness." Some poems are too literal and pedantic, as is the beginning of "Scarves": "Tricks are tricks,/ objective, logical,/ excellent techniques." When Swados pushes dramatic elements, the poems lift off: "I will be a planet called/ Houdinimus and children/ will make wishes on me." VERDICT The narrative story of Houdini is always intriguing, and Swados's poems build on one another to prove the lines "man as an instrument/ of wonder." An interesting first collection.-Doris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, IN (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.