Understandings and Misunderstandings

One goes to Peter Waldor's poems as to deep wells of wisdom, to draw up the strength and beauty that we so urgently need. Understandings and Misunderstandings: in poem after poem, it is the reader, even more than the poet, who is confronted with these situations. What do we know about nature? About the people around us? About our loved ones? About the often troubling social circumstances we have inherited? Seemingly anecdotal, seemingly based on quotidian events, hewn from the vernacular, these poems gradually unfold into complex parables. Like Gerald Stern, Waldor's "mentor and master" in the wonderful poem "Pear Sharing," Waldor has learned a great lesson: "to talk to as many / strangers as one can." Listen.

-Norman Finkelstein, author of Track

Peter Waldor's poems in Understandings and Misunderstandings invite us to linger within the brightness of the everyday, to celebrate the beauty of human relationships, and to consider the basis of our understanding of one another. Deft and dextrous lines that deliver prim-metered narratives hallmark these poems, as they interrogate the human condition, aiming toward a better way of being in the world, to learning how to be fully present, and to being dedicated to finding joy, reverie, and delight in the ordinary. Waldor invites us to cherish all of what we share with others, and to recognize the way in which we live is singular. "Permit yourself / to dream," he writes, and so we shall.

-Carey Salerno, Executive Director, Alice James Books