It is as if a storm is approaching. For the moment, however, the sea remains motionless, waiting. The tides that move slowly beneath the taut rhythms of the poetry set the world into motion, allow us to experience what rushes out from each moment while reflecting on the causes and purposes that led us to it. The book is divided into four sections that achieve together a strangely comforting music, recapitulating and transforming themes that recur throughout his poetry, the opposing poles of fixity and flux, creation and loss, action and remembrance, but this music is more a succession of sad songs than movements of a string quartet. As in Strand's earlier books, most notably Dark Harbor, there is an atmosphere of changing light and weather that reflect changing perceptions and emotion.
Figures seem to exist in a perpetual twilight, waiting for the fullness of night.
But now In this lavender light under the shade of the pines the time Seems right. The dust of a passion, the dark crumble of images Down the page are all that remain. Had we not taken his place. In the first section, which most resembles Dark Harbor, everything seems to be on the brink of a quiet finale. Strand devotes considerable attention to The Prelude in a chapter of his forthcoming book of essays, The Weather of Words.