Customer Reviews

Container Gardening

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Container Gardening is an anthology of poetry by poet, playwright, and "The Boston Globe" literary columnist Ellen Steinbaum. The free verse is peppered with exquisite moments of perception and insight, at times recounting simple memories, at times exploring philosophical conundrums. A most enjoyable addition to poetry shelves. "The Question": You do not choose. This is the one you are / given, the one that will be yours always. This / will be the mote at the edge of your vision, / the lost puzzle piece, the rough tooth edge. / This is the question that will be the whisper / in your ear, the rhythm of your breathing. / The answer is in the locked drawer, the one / that has no key.

Container Gardening is a quietly moving and powerfully evocative follow-up to Ellen Steinbaum's first book of poetry Afterwords. That volume which limned the contours of loss and recovery finds its worthy successor in this work. Here Steinbaum nourishes the plants in her own container garden and causes them to flower into these entangling poems. She attends softly to detail, nuance, and delicate intimacy. These are poems of time, of growth, maturity, and decay. Ellen Steinbaum speaks with a knowing wisdom of chance encounters, of sadness, and return. This book gently entwines you in its full-hearted embrace. It is book to cherish and to give to others.