The Past Won't Stay Behind You: Poems

Samuel Hazo likes to think of poetry as art in the present perfect-that tense in English from which events in the past continue into the present. Each poem in this collection, whatever the subject-travel, regret, love, death, war, or family-is firmly tied to a real history; all the poems begin in actual places and at specific times and continue on even into the life of the reader. Sometimes a poem ends with a kind of answer, sometimes in anger, sometimes in dismay or amazement, but every poem is a duel with reality. Here is a poetry to challenge the spirit, to awaken the con- science, to assure the uncertain heart. It is, in the deepest sense, poetry of the world as it is.