Here and Hereafter

The poems in distinguished poet Elton Glaser's sixth collection journey through the seasons, from spring to spring, a pilgrimage down to the South, over the Midwest of snow and roses, and across the Romance countries of Europe. If the poet often finds himself "[h]alfway between grief and longing," that may be his natural condition, rooted in this world against the pull of the next, his faith in the "purple evidence of plums, the testimony of wild persimmon" weathering the stormy preachers and the droughts of middle age. Within that tension, the range of tones is unlimited, sometimes in the same poem, moving from the serious to the sublime, from anguish to awe. Holding everything together is Glaser's unmistakable voice, a warm idiom made pungent by wintry wit: "my tongue of odd American, my mongrel sublime."