Penetralia

"How do we learn to savor loss, concoct / a varied diet from its basic raw ingredients?" the poet asks. In working toward an answer in this, his sixth collection, Richard Foerster probes the innermost recesses of awareness and our most deep-seated fears of mortality, moral failure and abandonment. But ultimately this book celebrates the mystery of our tenuous existence within Nature's uncompromising order. In Penetralia language itself becomes the necessary ceremonial means by which the poet can acknowledge and honor the terrifying sacred "other" that resides everywhere within. Ranging across landscapes both real and mythic, from New England gardens to a tomb in ancient Egypt, these new poems are radiant and wise.