by Carolyn Forché
Since Forché, 31, spent 1978-80 in El Salvador, it's not surprising that this book is heavily political. Her self-righteous indignation is trying; in a poem to a friend who returned to the U.S. from El Salvador she writes, "You were born to an island of greed/and grace where you have this sense/of yourself as apart from others. It is/not your right to feel powerless." But her verse is evocative in a way even the best reportorial prose can never be. (Harper & Row, $11.50; paper, $5.95)
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