Poetry highlight of the month; Tichy: a fresh, talented voice; The Hands in Exile, by Susan Tichy. New York: Random House. 98 pp. $10, hard cover; $5.95, paperback.

Many of our younger poets are turning away from the hyperconscious self-absorption that marks contemporary poetry and are instead centering their work on the broader social, political, and emotional issues of the world. They are producing work that is clear-voiced, richly descriptive, and accessible.

Susan Tichy's ''The Hands in Exile'' is a fine example of such writing. Ms. Tichy, living on an Israeli kibbutz in the war-shocked Mideast, gives us a landscape that presents two inseparable faces - one, starkly beautiful and mysterious; the other, ripe with the potential for sudden violence. The poems not only reveal a woman's personal explorations; they provide human proportions for an area we measure mainly through headlines.

This is Ms. Tichy's first collection; some of the work is self-consciously artful, but there are many fine poems to be found here, along with the signs of an impressive new talent.