Cows turn their backs to the world. And these flat-out plains. Now rain paints war designs On the face of this plow-traced land. Furrows retreat like sandcastles Washed by a truculent sea. Autos creep wheel-deep in water.
Traffic lights blink into sleep.
Against one window of the restaurant Where we, just passing through, Have been forced to serve the storm, Debris etches a dance of death. This 633-page volume, the first in an impressive series comprising the full collection of Louis Daniel Brodsky s verse, is a tangible record of one man s travail and his ecstasy, his certitude and his confusion, and, finally, his journey into the heart of the person he would never stop becoming a poet. Louis Daniel Brodsky s verse captures the unloosing of an American poet s voice. . . . This outstanding anthology traces the maturation of Brodsky as a writer during his . . . These pieces serve not only as a measure of Brodsky s evolution as a poet but as a human being struggling for purpose and a place.