It's hard to resist using a game show announcer's voice when discussing Jennifer Knox's latest collection, Days of Shame & Failure. Knox knows how to draw human complexity out of absurdity and kitsch (and vice versa) without positioning herself above it. She is one of us, sharing our fear and wonder, and we feel this sense of community as if there were five million other viewers-a spin on Whitman's "multitudes"-watching along with us to see how she makes it out of each lyrically harrowing poem. Is that camp? Is it satire? Who cares "Whatever it is," as one poem reports, it gives me "a real,...