Fault Lines

In this new collection of his recent poetry, Jonathan Greene once more displays that lapidary grace that readers have admired and critics praised repeatedly over the past four decades. The title invokes those flaws concealed within the solidity of everyday objects, waiting patient years to shatter at an unsuspecting touch, former use abandoned to the fragmentary evidence of how they were made and how they ended. Just so the poems here offer unexpected insights into the various shards of life that engage Greene's notice: a friend's father's shirt, his parent's bed as a child, walking sticks, his woodstove, the heartbeat of a phonograph needle, a cricket who one-ups him in storytelling. These are poems infused with poignancy and loss, guilt and anguish, irony and the occasional caustic commentary, but also love and delight in life, and always great good wit and deep humanity. Greene designed the book as well, and the placement of the words upon the page is as fine as the impressions left in the mind upon reading.