THE STRENGTH OF AMERICAN POETRY these days must lie in its sheer variety. Poems that develop with the linear cohesiveness of naturalistic fiction, poems that work by collaging or mashing up received idioms, poems that unfold as narratives yet with an undercurrent of associative strangeness—all these may prove first rate, and all may render the tones and contours of contemporary life. But such variety can also make for beffudlement, at least for readers without some partisan creed about poetry. How do different styles reflect different types of experience? How can we tell between our personal taste and genuine aesthetic judgment? What transcends style? How can we find it?

The beauty of David St. John’s new book of poems, The Auroras, comes in large part from the authority with which it quells such questions. St. John’s imagination holds a vantage back behind any given approach. This allows him to step through whatever door becomes available, and fully inhabit the poetic world on the other side. Readers familiar with his earlier work will recognize his talent for shape-shifting. Here’s a poet who has written one of the best contemporary poems in rhyme and meter (“To Pasolini” in Study for the World’s Body, 1994) and has also perfected several of his own, invented forms, a poet who has written gem-like lyrics and also a novel in verse (The Face, 2004.)

In The Auroras, he designs a grand structure from his aesthetic flexibility: although at moments they may resemble one another, each of the three sections provides an entirely different sound and feeling. Listen to the openings of three poems, one from each section:

The blonde carrying the tote bag full of bones
Is dressed in a chiffon blouse printed with

Persimmon-colored butterflies
& all across the desert

The sound of
Three jade dice rattling in an old man’s palm—

                        — “Three Jade Dice”

¤

Then one of the bikers
Went at the other – a quick

Steel flash & a breathless
Grunt made it clear

He’d taken the brunt
Of the blade in his gut

—“In the Mojave”

¤

What is it about the motives of the night? All of those lovers
Walking in the luster of their pasts. The strings of melody plucked
In the lightness of sleep.

—“The Book”

Encountering these passages in some poetry taste test, would anyone guess they were by the same author writing in the same period? The first excerpt appears surreal: the images show convincing particularity — the “persimmon-colored butterflies” on the woman’s blouse startle from the page in high-res — and yet the setting and drama lead us into the realm of dream and allegory. The second opening registers as contemporary realism: with brash immediacy, counterpointed by p...