The ravaged settings in which many of D. Nurkse’s new poems take place — including New York on 9/11 — seem perfectly matched to the grizzled, Herman Melville–esque visage in his author photo. Clearly, Nurkse’s been through a battle or two — if only (so far as we know) of the metaphysical kind — and his work transmits experience in searing, unromanticized terms: “I think there was no barrier / between us then: no world, / no other world, just nakedness / and the pupil of the eye / slowly becoming visible.”