By DAVID ORR [Poetry] – The anthology on my desk is titled Poetry of the Law: From Chaucer to the Present, edited by David Kader (a law professor at Arizona State) and Michael Stanford (a pubic defender in Phoenix). I’m both a lawyer and a poetry critic, so asking me to discuss this book would seem to present an especially harmonious pairing of subject and analyst—like handing an animal cracker recipe to a zoologist-pastry chef. And indeed, flipping through, I find plenty of work that appeals to me as a reader of poems who is also, when necessary, a filer of briefs. We have some well-chosen passages from Spenser (“Then up arose a person of deepe reach, / . . . / That well could charme his tongue, and time his speach”), an intriguing poetic performance from the seminal jurist Sir William Blackstone (“The Lawyer’s Farewell to His Muse”), and a number of more recent efforts that, while mixed in quality, manage to give the reader a sense of the ways in which contemporary poetry can encompass legal subjects. Lawrence Joseph’s “Admissions against Interest,” for example, nicely captures the atmosphere of nervous, chilly efficiency that permeates American corporate law, as in the beginning of the second section:

Now, what type of animal asks after facts?
—so I’m a lawyer. Maybe charming,

direct yet as circumspect as any other lawyer
going on about concrete forces of civil

society substantially beyond anyone’s grasp
and about money. Things like “you too

may be silenced the way powerful
corporations silence, contractually”

attract my attention.

Not the warmest way in which to regard legal thinking, but then, the average lawyer’s existence rarely bears much resemblance to the life of Ben Matlock, let alone Atticus Finch. Poems by Borwning, Kenneth Fearing, and the underrated William Empson are similarly successful at engaging with legal concepts and language. As with any anthology, there are a few pieces that don’t quite come off (“Why does a hearse horse snicker / Hauling a lawyer away?” asks Carl Sandburg, inviting prosecution for felony anthropomorphizing). But the project as a whole is a pleasure for the casual reader, as any collection of good poems ought to be.

Continued at Poetry | More Chronicle & Notices.