ACQUAINTED WITH ABSENCE
From the introduction by Douglas Glover:
This isn’t a book, it’s a keen and a lament. It’s words shimmering over the void. It’s whistling in the dark. It’s lusty, lorn, fearful, lonely, melancholy, defiant, ebullient, mischievous, loopy, solemn, comic, mysterious, fragile, erudite, and grand. In “Letter V” (from In the Era of Acid Rain, 1993), the poet addresses an interlocutor: “You complain of my limited subject matter. Death, you say, it’s always death. Let’s hope we can keep up the supply of men, to fuel your ruminations.” To which the poet replies: “But, my dear, you are mistaken. It is not death but union, mating, bridgeworks, which is my subject. Yin and Yang. The severing of bridgeworks, my lament.
