To Leave for Our Own Country

Though what we commonly consider sacred in religious terms is referenced in this moving and love-filled collection, that tradition is eclipsed by a higher, wider, and more ethereal reach. The poems here provide a record of the poet’s always sudden and brief yet bright encounters with that unknown mystical realm—the texture of water as it falls against the shore, the sound of a snapped tree branch, the recollection of a childhood walk to school and the influence of weather on the meaning of such a walk. All common enough, one may say, but the richness of observed detail in these crisp poems is coupled with formal skill, wisely measured ambiguity, some wry off-hand humor, and plenty of wit. For my reading, that adds up to a fine, uncommonly absorbing book, one that tilts the somber toward affection and the grave toward delight.

—Maurice Manning