ABOUT THIS BOOKSpot in the Dark is a collection of poetry exploring the nuances of human relationships. From new love to extramarital affairs to dating to solitude, the book’s four sections read as a journey by a series of narrators who wrestle through the beginning and middle stages of love, the complications of an affair, and the challenges of single life, and finally come to focus on the external world: the beauty and starkness of a winter landscape, the ebullience of spring, the breathtaking loveliness of a sunset. The book’s arc moves from examining the human wish and will to connect to another to presenting the self as part of a larger, richer, and more complicated set of external relationships. Written predominantly in free verse, these sometimes meditative, sometimes cynical, sometimes playful poems sift through the difficulties and pleasures of living in the world.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Acknowledgments
<b>I</b>
Spot in the Dark
Fallen in Love Again,
The Distance of Motion
Wheels Inside Wheels
If Only
Winter Preparations
Moving Topsoil and Thinking about Us
The Edge of Enough
En Route
Nowhere Fast
<b>II</b>
Me and You and an Oh
Hands Full of Nothing
Letter, March 18
No News Here
Returns
Common Dreams
The Mistress
To One Who Can't Leave
The Wish
<b>III </b>
Alone, Open Road
Friend of a Friend
Soul Mate
With a Woman
Teaching Composition in Erie, Pennsylvania or
Madonna Should Never Write a Dating Column
Winter, Erie, PA
I Believe in Pain the Way Others Believe in God
Lyric Melancholia
The Letter I Sent to My Mother
Explanations for Distraction
Her Power
The Art of Schmoozing
My Former Lover Said He Was Tired
What's Left
What We Keep When Lovers Go
The Feeling of Wings
After the Goodbye
<b>IV</b>
Ars Poetica
Boardwalk and Bach
Again
Matin
Worms Dancing
My Doggy Self
Audience of Two
When Can I See Your Shetland Ponies?
Pilgrimage