The Antioch Review, Vol. 63, No. 2, Spring 2005 Unrelated Individuals Forming a Group Waiting to Cross by Mark Yakich. National Poetry Series 2003, Penguin Books, 75pp., $16.00 (paper). Yakich borrowed this wonderful title from the caption of a photograph of people waiting for a traffic light. His collection contains a hodge-podge of characters gathered from paintings, life, and literature. Often, poems are lit with a fairytale glow that colors the scene with wryness or whimsy. In Yakich's most remarkable experiment, he writes a poem in English, has it translated into Danish, and then re-translates it. In one case ("Matinee") the poem works; in the other, less so, but the point is that he did it at all. This exuberance binds the book together as much as does the image of emptiness in love. Parties I and II are straddled with a questions of how much the world to let in. In the best senses, Yakich seems to have chosen the world: narratives arrive as ekphrasis, prose, lists, and traditional lines. His references are kaleidoscopic: it's no surprise that he is a master of moments. For example, line breaks in "Dreams Hardly Ever Seem to Change for the Better" don't generate much energy, but then we discover an image for yellow, which "does seem to illuminate everything in world": Yakich writes, "Take, for instance, the very marrow of our bones." Of course. Yakich's sly little narratives -- "Before Losing Yourself Completely to Love," "The Invisible Man's Daughter," "The Ordinary Sun," and others -- shine the brightest. These poems ask us to rethink our notions of the world. "My One and Only Love No. 9" is stitched through with the refrain, "I knew what I was doing." Yakich knows what he's doing, too. This book offers many arresting instances and plenty of wonderful poems. But just occasionally, I would love to see this poet -- with all his infectious intellectual energy and curiosity -- caught more unawares.                                 -- Malinda Markham