Laying Ways [Hardcover]

A familiar imagery-free of conscious symbolism-is woven into the fabric of these texts: beaches, shells, ships, tides keenly observed; the play of light as day passes into night, or from night to day; as winter moves toward spring and spring to summer and autumn. Places like Key West, or Proust's fictional Combray, appear side by side: motifs, among others, in a tapestry peopled with human figures encountered along the way of the 'we,' the elusive lovers who, wiser than Dante's Paolo and Francesca, will read 'on and on.' Love is at the center of the poet's itinerary. One feels the presence of a keen and unflinching 'eye' within the text, and withal an 'I' gentle and compassionate in a deeply humane way.