"Every lovesick summer has its song,And this one I pretended to despise.But if I were alone when it came on,I turned it up full-blast to sing along -- A primal scream in croaky baritone,The notes all flat, the lyrics mostly slurred -- No wonder I spent so much time alongMaking the rounds in Dad's old Thunderbird." -- From "Cruising with the Beach Boys" by Dana GioiaNo one should be surprised that rock and roll music turns up in the work of many of the Baby-Boom poets, where it conjures up poignant memories, evokes a specific mood, or haunts the poets' psychic landscape. Arranged in a loosely thematic manner, the 125 poems in Sweet Nothings mirror the varied forms of rock and roll, mimic its sounds, bask in its innocence, draw inspiration from its rebelliousness. For this collection Jim Elledge has gathered works by 79 poets, among them some of the most highly regarded poets of our time: Frank O'Hara, Joyce Carol Oates, David Wojahn, Thom Gunn, Rita Dove, Lynda Hull, Albert Goldbarth, Lisel Mueller, Yusef Komunyakaa, Gary Soto, William Matthews. In the final section of the book the poets comment on the relationship between their works and rock and roll. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

The conceit behind this collection is familiar: since rock 'n' roll played a formative role in the lives of baby boomers, writes Elledge ( Nothing Nice ) in his introduction, ``no one should be surprised that the music appears in the work of many of the Baby Boom poets, especially in their poems dealing with adolescence and young adulthood.'' Ultimately, though, his book is intriguing less for the general sociohistorical reasons noted than because it harbors an underlying current of sadness and loss. Far from the good times of the music, these poets stare at the '60s--the '50s and '70s are much less mentioned eras--and don't like what they see. ``We lied: there was no other way,'' writes Katharyn Howd Machan in ``In 1969.'' And while the collection offers 79 poems from writers that include Thom Gunn, Yusef Komunyakaa, Rita Dove and Dana Gioia, the poetry rarely conveys the power of the music that so influenced them. The desire to recapture a lost youth is best observed in a poem that isn't really about rock--``Over Voice of America,'' Dennis Finnell's ode to jazz master Charlie Parker. And few writers achieve the straightforward desire stated in David Trinidad's ``Meet the Supremes,'' a wonderful journalistic account of one man's obsession with ``girl groups'' that summons up a musicality elsewhere mostly missed. (May) From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information