New York poet Paul Violi is recognisably descended from O’Hara, Ashbery and Koch, yet unswervingly original. He’s also one of the most entertaining poets I know. That’s partly because Violi tells a good story. Something of his casually surreal subject matter can be deduced from the title of his forthcoming prose book: Selected Accidents, Pointless Anecdotes. One of the best poems here, ‘Bathos’, starts as a meditation about American misfits before moving into an account of how the author skipped the bill at an Amsterdam hotel in 1968. He makes it to the airport where he steps on the already injured foot of Liberace’s boyfriend. As the poet tries to apologise, Liberace “with something like dread arising in his voice” loses his cool and the poem seamlessly switches from tight metre to prose.

     Violi is one of those writers who sends you to the dictionary every so often, relishing obscure, surprising words, not all of which actually exist. “It’s my word against yours”, says the narrator of ‘The Anamorphosis’, “and the word is bejugglement”. I often feel bejuggled after a Violi poem. He writes a lot about art and literature, but is equally at home discussing the way to behave in Manhattan traffic, mountaineering, or classical mythology. It’s a hard poetry to categorise - tough and colloquial for long stretches, then suddenly bursting into song. Or there’s ‘Complaint’, a tender, lyrical love poem, the major conceit of which is the writer as a nincompoop (herein described as an ancient bird which once knew how to sing).

     ‘The Hazards of Imagery’, a long sequence which makes up the final third of the book, takes us on a tour of places, real and imaginary, often from history, mythology or art. Irony’s never far away. Here’s the first verse of ‘In The Gift Shop At The Lunatic Asylum’:

Always on sale, the figurines
of infants are made out of tar
and are produced by the inmates,
former apprentices
of Imbroglione, mostly.

On visiting days family
and friends purchase them
as presents for the inmates.

     This is a rich, rambunctious poetry, which is often funny, never difficult, and repays rereading. It’s Paul Violi’s sixth full length collection. The earlier books are equally good and equally hard to track down in the UK. An enterprising publisher really ought to bring out a Selected.