Poetry. These spare, epigrammatic poems capture famous and obscure figures, contemporary and historical, in unusualsituations. Hart Crane lurks in a parking lot outside a snowbound church. Howard Hughes flies from Acapulco exile to his final rendezvous with death. Pope Paul goes to a disco while his predecessor scolds a renegade bishop. Leon Trotsky takes a bath in Mexico City just a few blocks from the mansion of Hernán Cortes. Pablo Casals performs for Gertrude Stein and Deng Tsaioping takes his time dying while Wei Jinsheng survives him in the minds of one billion Chinese citizens. Ryu Makoto is the new name of an American poet resident in Japan for the past thirty years. His poems have been praised by poets and critics as diverse as Edmund White, John Frederick Nims, Donald Richie, Joseph Brodsky, James Merrill and Richard Eberhart.