Facing the Music

Music is used in this book of poetry as more than subject matter but as a metaphor for the examined life. In the collection, a man’s transformations are measured by the concerts he has witnessed, the depth of a woman’s life is revealed by an unfinished painting her son a­ttempts to complete, and a composer is gauged by his silences. With a compression rare in contemporary poetry and a leavening wit, the author draws the reader toward a subject’s interior through its beguiling surface and springs secrets from uninspected common places.