Bavarian Shrine & Other Poems

The poems in this collection, representing work from the decade 1980-1990, range from evocations of common objects, a sea shell or a twisted nail, to explorations of an inner world of memory and imagination. Before the emblemic life of plants, the white waterlily or the annunciatory skunk cabbage, the poem becomes an act of loving attention. Several poems explore the analogy between these objects and the hidden life of the imagination, often with a Baroque exuberance of language. Throughout the collection, there is a tension between things in their unique coherence and the imagination compelled to assimilate them; our seeing is never pure, is never seeing and only seeing.