Here & Then
This collection begins where Blue Ridge Pie ends, with poems set in the mountains of western Maryland. A farewell to the life lived there introduces a series of poems about the mountainous terrain of a new life, that of retirement.
Poems attempting to represent the downs and ups of that terrain, the moods of the hiker, occupy the remainder of the collection. And because the poems appear roughly in the order in which they were written, they constitute a sort of log of the hike thus far.
The optimistic declaration of self-acceptance in the final lines of the book’s first poem, “The Coming of Age,” turns out to be premature. Subsequent poems represent the retiree as rueful, grim, petulant – “small-/minded, listless, waspish, wily,” as “Things” has it – and it is only with two poems describing a trip to San Francisco, where the poet was born, that gratitude for his “long and quiet life” issues in a modest equanimity.
The poems that follow further suggest travel as a resource, and especially travel into the past. The book’s final seven-poem Coda recalls the poet’s first years in Italy from the charmed vantage point of having survived them. And point, joyfully, to What Happened Next.
Here & Then is listed on the Orchises Press website and is available for purchase.
