POETRY

TERRACES OF RAIN: An Italian Sketchbook by David St. John, with drawings by Antoine Predock (Recursos Press/Santa Fe Literary Center Books; $18.95; 76 pp.) David St. John is the poetry editor of The Antioch Review and a professor of English at the University of Southern California. His fourth collection of poetry is illustrated by Antoine Predock, a New Mexico architect currently teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles. St. John’s poems evoke the Italy of scrubby pines and wild herbs, and Predock’s drawings, rather than distracting, contribute familiar colors and textures. These are travelers’ poems, not to be confused, as the poet writes in “Vespers: The Balcony,” “with the real passage of time, or other things.”