This far : poems
(Book)

"...As I gathered these poems...they seemed to flow together like linked movements in a musical composition. Thus, I began to think of them as suites of poems whose preoccupations or leitmotifs are related. In one movement: grief and the impulse to honor the "saints" in my personal and creative life. In another: the sacramental power of works of art and the natural wold to illuminate life and loss. Finally, poems born of opposing, but not mutually exclusive impulses: the desire to practice monastic silence and contemplation, and the urge to bear witness. I hope that the variety of forms in which these poems arrived, and their shifting elegiac, lyric, or narrative ambitions, are held together by a single voice and consciousness, much as a conductor guides an orchestra....In the end, think of these poems as stones, marking the circuits of one poet's pilgrimage. THIS FAR--an offering of solidarity, an invitation to journey."--Introduction [vii]-viii.