Great Regulars: [Rachel] Wetzsteon is the kind of poet

who invariably gets called a "flaneuse"--even by herself, in "Halt!"--probably because she writes about Manhattan in a Dorothy Parker sort of way, if Dorothy Parker had gone to Yale. As you might expect, she's a skilled hand at verse that is, if not light, certainly light-ish, as in "Freely From Wyatt":

I have become the forlorn type who buys
almond biscotti for a long night in,
glumly recapturing a sense of sin
through stomach-aches. It hath been otherwise.

This is fine and droll, sure, but her strongest writing takes on richer tones.

from David Orr: The New York Times: How Poets Achieve Their Styles

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