Earthly Measures

From its opening epigraph, On Love takes the subjects of and fusion, autonomy and blur. The initial up separateness progression of fifteen shapely and passionate lyrics (including a sonnet about the poet at seven, a villanelle about the loneliness of a pioneer woman on the prairie, and an elegy for Amy Clampitt) opens out into a sequence of meditations about love. These arresting love poems are spoken by a gallery of historical figures from Denis Diderot, Heinrich Heine, Charles Baudelaire, and Ralph Waldo Emerson to Gertrude Stein, Frederico Garcia Lorca, Zora Neale Hurston, and Colette. Personal, literary, On Love is formally adept and moving, a volume to be read and reread.