Putting the Pieces Together

Looking back, the myriad events of a life seem woven of a single cloth, and likewise, each poem in this astonishing new collection is linked in some way to the others while also reflecting the human need to make sense of seemingly fragmentary experiences that, with the perspective of time, reveal a meaningful overall pattern. Joseph Campbell puts it this way in speaking of Schopenhauer: "Just as your dreams are composed by an aspect of yourself of which your consciousness is unaware, so, too, your whole life is composed by the will within you. ...The whole thing gears together like one big symphony, with everything unconsciously structuring everything else." Some individual poems can be seen as a microcosm of this approach: autobiographical snippets intermixed with mythological or literary motifs. Others take the form of what Robert Bly called "leaping poetry," seeming to jump from one topic to another while an unspoken idea emerges between the lines. They are meant to achieve their effect through associations that move between intersecting worlds, one image or thought evokes another-like montage, like our dreams.