Stance

Rhymed poems of eight lines each, in a rocking thirteen-syllable line, spoken by a man in his seventies who has lost the woman he loved. Opening with lines from Psalm 51 and from George Herbert, they move out of mourning towards joy and desire in late life. Most of the love poems are memories: wine, dancing, eyes dark as bilberries, a lover who is now a shadow or a straw on the water. Memory brings back the taste of nutmeg from childhood, sisters, a mother and a father, and the Lutheran town of Cieszyn. Death stays close, in a neglected garden with a tamarisk visited after a loss, or ants filing past a dead mole in the compost, yet the book sides with life.

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About the book

Form

Poetry

Length

59 pages in the original

First published

2017 by Convivo

Author's age

71 when first published

ISBN

9788394622305 (original)