[Miss Wakoski's] poems are professionally supple and clear and often feature a kind of sardonic humor, but their pervasive unpleasantness makes her popularity rather surprising. One can only conclude that a number of people are angry enough at life to enjoy the sentimental and desolating resentment with which she writes about it. Notable among her themes is an anti-male rage that seems the opposite of liberating: Miss Wakoski isn't mad at men who oppress her, she's mad at men who fail to fulfil her exacting romantic fantasies. "I could no more give up my idea of finding the perfect man than I could give up poetry," she writes in an oddly defiant introductory essay. "Are they not the same concept, the same spirit, the same holy quest, for beauty…?"

The eponymous subject of ["The Man Who Shook Hands"] is a fellow who took leave of the poet after...