Publisher's Synopsis
'These are poems I know, having seen them come out, and having read them to my writing classes for the past fifteen years. A Boy's Face with Swan Wings is a beautifully conceived book, and reads as such, not as a miscellany. The poet develops multiple facets of a multi-faceted world, and develops each fully, starting with the Zen quality of the nature related poems of the first section, poems such as 'Somewhere in Tennessee' and 'Owl'. Then, the family history grounding of the second section, on to considerations of art and time in the third, with poems such as 'Su Tung P'O' and 'Gauguin,' and on, again, to feature the immediate family in the fourth section. The fifth part is composed of love/erotic poems. And then, one of my favorite sections, the sixth, where in poems of memory and loss, such as 'Mike' and 'Autumnal', there's testimony to the experience of having lived in the world and having cared about people. The book concludes with poems about one's primary relationship, marriage, the raptures and the doubts. And these poems are by turns meditative, and funny, and ultimately most open, as good art is. A Boy's Face with Swan Wings is a book to take-in, and to carry with you.'
