Poetry can be enlightening by presenting views that are out of your normal day-to-day events, and this collection admirably does that. There are haunting poems like "Man who beat up homosexuals reported to have AIDS virus". There are also touching personal elegies.. "Was love, Jim, ever more than a hand poked through the shower curtain-- a blurred touch easily rinsed away, laughed off?" and "Well past sixty, I know little more about wisdom than we did at thirty, but lots more about folly...". There are also marvelously urbane and literate references, to artists like Monet and Matisse, and titles that begin with lines from Harry James and Isadora Duncan. The references extend to the Bible ... "The Bible says to forgive out enemies, not our friends." Many of these poems are monologues that I felt gave a snapshot of a different life, like reading the caption on an old postcard, of someone I didn't know. Although these poems may seem somber, I had the chance to hear him read in person, which helped me appreciate some of the subtle humor here.
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