Faces of Memory

Read together, the three long poems in this book constitute a kind of epic. In the manner of a cubist painting, they present, through the medium of memory, the complex portrait of a man, the poet. The poems are dramatic narratives, each providing a distinctive perspective on, and poetic use of, memory. The poet is a Christian, and the poems, which range across relationships and places he has known, evoke a life lived in faith and hope. The Bells of Swettl uses the framework of the monastic offices to dramatize and universalize the movement of a life through time; The Psaltery is a meditation, studded with stories, on life's meaning in the face of passing time and death; and, in fifteen poems, The Trinity Suites evokes an array of characters and remembered experiences that explore, in a harsh world, the possibility of love and redemption. Themes such as the relationship of son to father and mother, the love of husband and wife, the tension between city and wilderness, the sorrow of loss, the horror of violence, weave through the poems. Throughout, differently in each poem, memory is deployed as the vehicle to structure the past and intimate a possible future, thus giving order and shape to human life.