From: The New Leader | Date: November 30, 1992| Author: | COPYRIGHT 1992 American Labor Conference on International Affairs. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

IF FEEL personally as if the top of my head were taken off," Emily Dickinson wrote, "I know that is poetry." Gjertrud Schnackenberg' s third collection, A Gilded Lapse of Time (Farrar Straus Giroux, 143 pp., $19.00) is the rare book able to meet this demanding standard. The 39-year-old poet dauntlessly takes up cosmic themes: human creation versus the work of God, the impact myth has on real events, the relationship between love and art, the existence of evil. Fictional situations and characters jostle historical incidents, rulers, painters, and writers. Sta~in's Soviet Union, ...