Christina Pugh’s new book of poetry, The Right Hand: Poems, might be labelled as well a collection of Zen koans, so compressed and taut the language and syntax of every line and stanza. Organized into two parts, “Into the Skin” and “L’Incontro: The Meeting,” and full of disparate themes such as piercing and weaving, the yin and yang of opposites nevertheless meld together to cohere into one body (in every sense of the word).

“Into the Skin” begins with the persona receiving acupuncture relief: “the slow narcotic pins wove / a chain of heat   around my calf   like eyelets” (18). These pleasurable pains follow a description of Maya Lin’s pin-pointing, literally, rivers of pins pushed into walls to follow the Hudson River’s flow, suggesting the arterial flow beneath her exposed epidermis, “…the portal / the laminate   the barrier / the reef against        the system” (10). The acupuncture’s nepenthe enhances an emphasis on cleansing and revitalizing the soul by puncturing the body. Trying to write with her non-dominate hand—her “right hand” of the title—the persona is “sculpted clean of everything” (29), but needs “you   inside me / raking  this vernal pool / without you     there I’m all / alone    in my body” (29). Experiencing alienation from language, she falls into a “cocoon” in her “death,” a “terrifying colorless / river of the self” (31), returning to Lin’s river motif, this time a mystical, transitional journey.

The first book ends with the image of the persona’s fingers on a prayer-gong, recalling “how little is required to make a sound” (41), a fitting end to the dreamlike narrative triggered by the silent spearing of needles. A memory is hatched of her younger self’s eyes being directed upward to a flock of birds that she “entered…severally” (43), then landing in a pool and “Swimming into character / A story mine and not mine” (43), a transference mirroring her earlier fusing with arterial rivers.

This metaphorical intrusion into the body and blending with the body’s interior’s coursing is continued in the second section, “L’Incontro: The Meeting,” by focusing on Bernini’s statue, Teresa’s Ecstasy.  “…a woman’s skin      is about to be pierced       by an angel” (49) describes the stilled, marbled action the persona encounters when entering the church with a “flock” of others, the word stitching the two parts together.

Studying the artwork, the persona finds Teresa’s face “neither woman / nor man her    face amplified       to a plane      of reception… // …in pain” (54-55), continuing the book’s theme, pain pierced by points with the purpose of receiving salvation. The dichotomy between angel and mortal is mused over, the actual separation not only in space, but in the solid fluidity of Teresa’s dress/robe, a “topography” (66) protecting her, the poet questioning how the angel will “pierce this infinite protection     the mind / created          to drift us from connection” (66). Once again, the division turns inclusion with images of “a stream soaks a pine root” (68) and “storm     systems                that startle at abutment / a clash   then     entwinement       of barometric pressures” (69). The watcher, too, is drawn into the separated art object, “unfettering the seam     between watcher          and creator / a febrile current         that ties my life to theirs” (70).

The poet is transported, “unanchored          to sensation” (80), her mystical flight folding the previous symbols into a transcendental moment, Teresa’s marble folds becoming the persona’s own: “…my folds transporting / the flash of neural jewel          piercing and I flow away in / rivers           unto stars” (80), her yearning simultaneously sexual and metaphysical. This personal response is mirrored in the statue: “She loves             the piercing” (86) as the poet “hopes   her body          will empty / its organs             will    whittle a membrane / the thinnest     shell for God” (87).

The book’s title is again alluded to in the final pages, the angelic right hand’s “fingers half-closed but / open   like a writing    hand:    a plume / or a pencil she’d     braid into her skin” (90). Several biblical passages clarify God’s right hand a sign of power and authority, beginning with Isaiah 41:10: “…fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Additionally, Psalm 118:16 suggests divinity: “The right hand of the Lord is exalted; the right hand of the Lord does valiantly.” These positive biblical references point to the angel’s arrow as a gift, a passion, a saving grace for the receiver. So, too, the poet, in grappling with her right hand writing, spreads a river of words, sounds, and meanings that connect the reader with idea, a conceptual penetration from page to mind and, ultimately, soul.