Halperin, Richard W - Anniversary - PB - SIGNED & Dedicated - Poetry

Anniversary is a sequence of love poems presented through a fracture of space and time:  a husband still here and writing, a wife no longer here but present.  Other poems punctuate this:  parents, myths, the very young, the very old, various dead, various missing, are lit up in a few lines, then disappear.  Places also loom up unexpectedly: a hotel room in Dublin, a lake in the North Woods of Wisconsin, a hospice in Ekaterinaberg, a Paris street.  Whether a dream or not, they carry over and are described with precision. 
    
Anniversary calls our attention to the circularity of our lives, the ways we live and relive. In these poems time stops, starts, shuffles and leaps, as it does in our minds, illuminated by flashes of emotion, full of light, colour and intelligent protest: 'Even the dying light is light.'  He catches the sudden blanks that are filled with the mind's yearning for understanding, sharp changes of direction in the poems that surprise and then open vistas, 'the tug of the soul like a fish on the end of a line.'  This is a passionate exploration of what makes life beautiful and devastating, a journey in delight, bereavement and above all memory.