If, as Oscar Wilde said, "nothing ages like happiness, " then nothing rejuvenates like a pursuit. That is certainly the American way, and in The Promised Folly, Judith Hall takes a fresh look at our American pursuits, our supreme fictions. She explores the folly that follows mere existence and gives it back to her readers in different voices -- Venus, Walt Whitman, Julius Caesar, "Ma" Rainey -- voices that contain multitudes. Whitman will become Falstaff, for example, and Venus becomes Mars Absurdities and incongruities, such as these, constitute for Hall, opportunities for lyric pleasure. The resulting poems are puckish, sumptuous, and austere, by turns, and not incidently compassionate.