"There are not many truly unusual experiences; there are uniquely precise explications of experiences. These precise explications are rare, but The Carnival of Affection offers them. These poems open windows into experience: A father raises a gay son laconically, evenhandedly, and their early time together resonates for decades. An early riser sifts the secret currents of his neighborhood. The mind and body watch each other in the intimate processes of age and sex. Mourners suffer the ceremonial gestures and scents of a funeral, a polite horror separate from the horror of death....