Forty Quartets

From the dustjacket:

Henry Sloss's new collection, with its formal rigor, attention to the particulars of everyday life and unflinching look at morality, furthers his reputation as one of the most moving poets of this time and any time. 

From the Washington Independent Review of Books:

Let me now shine the spotlight on Henry Sloss, who has been steadily crafting poems for decades. His new collection, Forty Quartets (Orchises Press), is a kind of Book of Days taking us through the seasons. Each poem is comprised of four sestets, employing enjambment, slant rhyme, and an envelope rhyme scheme of ABCCBA. He offsets this tight, if old-fashioned, structure with a natural conversational tone, as he finds himself living “what was known/once as a quiet life.”

One poem characterizes the waning of desire not as serenity so much as “a sort of nonchalance, /a shoulder-shrugging calm,” ending with a moving double entendre: “the fall’s long unfolding.”

He calls himself a codger or hermit. He is solitary and withdrawn, cognizant of time’s cyclical nature, but he also knows that time, for him, is running out. And he’s challenged by the need to fill his hours productively, in planting and watering the garden. It’s hard to plan ahead when “life can seem less/a blessing than a curse” and “all to the whirled succumb.”

His wise musings are impeccably paced even when the mood is occasionally dark. In one piece, it’s hurricane season, wet and dispiriting. Dread isn’t easily passed off as he anticipates “the accident, the awful/onset, the empty bed.”

Overall, though, there’s little self-pity. “Oh, no, don’t go there please!” he interjects. Or, “Wait! Isn’t your gardening fun and good exercise.” And elsewhere “...look! whole trees peeled/to skeletons succeed/in framing winter’s language.”

There’s weeding to be done in the garden, as in the self. And when the crops seem overly abundant, he pokes fun at himself. “The ‘Joy of Canning’ wanes, but you can’t just stop.” The seasons “step forward and step back/Seem ready and then balk.” In another poem, he finds it wearisome that tomatoes keep coming after their prime, as if they can’t wholly decide to stop. 

He finishes:

The other shoe will fall,
As the first fell at birth,
Beyond your yea or nay,
If life’s a holiday
From nothingness, the earth
Is heaven after all

No rage at the dying of the light in this beautifully crafted collection. Instead, a charming forbearance, a lightness of touch, and a quality we could all use more of these days: genuine humility.

Amanda Holmes Duffy is a columnist and poetry editor for the Independent and the voice of “Read Me a Poem,” a podcast of the American Scholar.

https://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/features/on-poetry-november-2025

Cover Art  "The Inlet" by Eva Carson

evakellercarson.com

Published Orchises Press. Hampton, NH. 2025

Available through Orchises Press (orchises@gmail.com) & Amazon Kindle