Lifelines: Selected Poems, 1950-1999 Philip Booth. Book

In the long shadow of Robert Frost--at whose feet he literally sat as a student--Philip Booth's voice speaks from a deep-rooted sense of place and of how one lives and finds oneself among others, and otherness. As Anthony Hecht wrote, "Booth has carefully mastered and cultivated a poetry of fierce and terrible calm. It represents a devotion of years, a self-mastering valor, and honesty that only the finest poet dares. He writes with all of New England's eloquent spareness and self-effacing courage." Lifelines knits together resonances from fifty years of writing--not least, his love of Thoreau--and includes a significant number of new, previously unpublished poems. From lyrics of sea, woods, and fields to lines on love, uncertainty, and responsibility, this is a monumental opus from "a master of descriptive metaphor, one of the best" (St. Louis Post-Dispatch). "Anyone who cares about poetry knows his work . . . his allegiance to the real, his swerving toward the philosophical, his refusal to back away from the edge . . . [his] subtle, refined portraits." --The New York Times Book Review "Booth's work assumes a remarkable weight." --American Poetry ReviewRead More