East of Sorrow

Poetry. EAST OF SORROW is Marc Hudson's fourth full-length collection of poems. In some ways, it is a continuation of his last two books, for it brings to a close the poetic journal of his life with his son, Ian, who died in 2002. But this book is equally about his daughter, Alix. Parenthood is a persistent theme in EAST OF SORROW: its pain because time is a slow mitigator, and its joy at seeing a vivacious young woman come into her own. A Christian perspective inflects some of these poems; others are distinctly Buddhist. More broadly, the book is a meditation on water, its shaping and animating presence on our planet. In its final section, the book moves fully out into the natural world; the personal gives way to the ecological, to a contemplation of our planet in this age that is sometimes called the Anthropocene. Though elegiac in places, EAST OF SORROW ends in praise.