Glossing the Spoils

Each poem from “Glossing the Spoils” works like an intricate time-travel machine, carrying the reader back to the beginnings of Western European literature.rn rnLike an ancient clapper bridge with its unmortared slabs of flat sandstone, these poems step us across the choppy currents of the past 1,5000 years.rn rnAnchored at one end in the deep past and at the other in the turbulent present, they explore interconnections between historical, personal, psychological,rn rnand mythic states. Plundering their opening passages from such early texts as “Beowulf,” “The Mabinogion,” and “The Tain,” these glosa address the eternalrn rnthemes of love and war, while giving voice to the surreal potency of the Western European imagination.rn