Publisher's Synopsis
How Many Faces Do You Have? is a poem sequence that interrogates intimacy, each poem a face the poet discovers, a reflection revealed in response to inner questioning. In a voice of quiet sonority, these lyrics journey from a high-school gym dance to a moonlit beach polka. They linger over sushi in Montreal and an airline meal at 40,000 feet on a flight. They touch joy and pain and celebrate the vicissitudes of love that goes "into the tangled heartland / where there is no trail," as a gift of being.
A face
is such a strange thing. Obsessed
with distortion, Modigliani
loved elongated faces
like Tamara's at a distance,
a flattened oval, two black jewels. He
painted with a dagger
in his teeth, they say, to see the face
within the face - grave,
cold-eyed as Nefertiti, Queen of Egypt,
whom I've always loved
for her name alone.
