In this evocative book, American poet and Vietnam veteran Dale Rittersbuch turns his attention to war and love, fatherhood and family.
Ritterbusch is a veteran of both literal and figurative warfare, and his speakers often embody the desire to bridge that distance,
to go back, reassemble
the disassembled, recall head
to body, the body still warm.
Poem after poem is a remembrance of hurtful things never really passed, as well as a fearful peering into a dark, destructive future. The mind scans the debris of ordinary life, now in search of consoling permanence, now in search of healing transience. Pain modulates into patience; humiliation, into humility.
