Nightstand

By David Swerdlow

Award-winning poet David Swerdlow returns with a collection highlighting the struggle to shelter family in violent times

David Swerdlow opens his poetry collection NIGHTSTAND with fear for his Latina wife, for the possibility that someone "will do her some unspeakable / harm because we live in the renewed world / of hatred" - a "hard / world we never wanted to imagine." But that is the world, and Swerdlow does not flinch from describing it. From such a beginning this could have been a grim undertaking, but instead this is a book of love, and of hope. His title poem describes the contents of his bedside table, "all the things I cannot part with," which is also an apt description of this collection, a eclectic mix of memories (including the remarkable story of a relative who was Lenin's "right hand man in the revolution," adding to his complicated family legacy). In the end, for all the crushing weight of history, he takes heart from the "beautiful ghosts" of his daughters, through whom he is "planning to outlive / myself." Appropriately he closes with a love poem, in a garden "already gone / to weeds," awaiting the coming of night: "I should love to know / how a day finally ends."

Poetry. Family & Relationships.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1956782400
• ISBN13: 9781956782400
• Release Date: July 2023
• Publisher: Broadstone Books
• Length: 80 Pages
• Weight: 0.31 lbs.