Heres and Nows

These well-crafted verses encourage thoughts more useful than our habitual ones, sometimes by reflection on large questions, sometimes by simple description of the missed wonder of ordinary things. The collected verses of the late David Henschel, subtitled 'poems from a life,' are presented together with a foreword by one of his former students and additional poems by Norah Henschel, Martin Dace and John Torrance. The poet's job is to enlarge us, then bring us back to ourselves, here. This David Henschel achieves in verses which, while pushing beyond the limits of traditional form, still use the old tools from the poet's toolbox: alliteration, internal rhyme, rhythm and every device that bends words into full meaning. "This is no land of milk and honey quiet. Only the restless searchers come here drawing words like water from deep wells below their spirits' hills: a joy too much like pain yearning to be given in others birth again."