Swagger & Remorse

Poetry. Richard Fox weaves lyrical magic in his SWAGGER & REMORSE, a book-length series of poems at once intimate ('I'd rather be a river than anything else') and richly metaphysical ('Trees look inside the houses, see all the wood & cannot look away'). They help us to consider grief -'I'll always / think of you as I pretend to eat the living air or pull / an origami swan out of nowhere / or out of someone's ear' - with humor and mystery and an elegant humanity. I recommend these distilled and powerful poems, with their birds and trees and houses and fires and rivers and hands and salt and blood to anyone who would like a fresh pair of eyes - 'Once a year the flowers on this very porch take wing / as if they just remembered something' - and a whole new landscape to marvel over -Maureen Seaton.