Becoming Others

Becoming Others collects new poems and poems selected from publications over a long poetic career. The poems are personal and intense expressions of feelings, finely crafted, with attention to imagery, sound, and rhythm. Craven writes in the tradition of Robert Browning and other poets who assume voices: poems are staged as dramatic monologues and soliloquies, so the speaker might or might not be the poet's own personal voice. What all of the voices have in common is a lyric sensibility that lets the world sing and uncovers new ways of seeing at every turn. Craven is "an artist of becoming others," a storyteller with an eye for detail and an ear for lyric. In this collection, the many selves he has gathered "take a rhythmic stage in chiming words," the poet exits "wearing many faces," and that makes these poems a joy to read.