Description

New Poems, this author’s third and most recent work, starts by taking you along on a month full of the daily activities, adventures, difficulties, and observations arising directly from hard country living (“December”), one poem for each day, just for openers. “Ravens,” the next series of sixteen poems, takes you deeply into a metaphysical world of fascinating mythical and religious associations and meanings of ravens in cultural history and scripture around the world. This is followed by “The Planets,” a beautiful little collection of seven poems, with each planet addressed individually and sensitively through its classical themes.That much would normally more than fill other contemporary books of poetry, but this author has much more here. Although the author was thirteen years old when Theodore Roethke passed away, “In Respect of Theodore Roethke” presents nine poems which, on their own, probe some of the dark and difficult places of existence where Roethke struggled. Finally, “Various” gives us ten poems that are not aligned topically and that give us the poet’s informality and humor. Throughout all the reader will encounter here, they will find a mastery of sound and structure, strength and grace, sending, ultimately, a plea of love into the world.

Description

New Poems, this author’s third and most recent work, starts by taking you along on a month full of the daily activities, adventures, difficulties, and observations arising directly from hard country living (“December”), one poem for each day, just for openers. “Ravens,” the next series of sixteen poems, takes you deeply into a metaphysical world of fascinating mythical and religious associations and meanings of ravens in cultural history and scripture around the world. This is followed by “The Planets,” a beautiful little collection of seven poems, with each planet addressed individually and sensitively through its classical themes.That much would normally more than fill other contemporary books of poetry, but this author has much more here. Although the author was thirteen years old when Theodore Roethke passed away, “In Respect of Theodore Roethke” presents nine poems which, on their own, probe some of the dark and difficult places of existence where Roethke struggled. Finally, “Various” gives us ten poems that are not aligned topically and that give us the poet’s informality and humor. Throughout all the reader will encounter here, they will find a mastery of sound and structure, strength and grace, sending, ultimately, a plea of love into the world.

Description

Afterwards
Whether they be high or low, the future
Seas will wash shores somewhere, shelves of shale
Wear and crack, sandstone dissolve to dunes,
Crustaceans scuttle . . .

New Poems reflects on the state of our planet. It explores insights from Pascal, Euler, Feynman and other physicists, and anatomizes spiritual epiphanies. These excursions join poems about the lives of immigrants and refugees, and the paradoxes of how they settled on Native American lands once claimed by conquistadores. California’s arid valleys, deserts, and coastal bluffs frame many of these portraits, as does the often-imperiled endurance of California’s oaks.
Music, meaning, and meter are married in poems that employ blank verse, sonnets, canzone, and other forms bound by the structure of rhyme and rhythm.