The Half-Life

Poetry. I've been a grateful reader of Roger Greenwald's work for many years. This moving collection names again and again the hard names, with their deep tone-falls, that mark the inner landscape of his poetry. It's a sensuous wordscape of life and loss, and it's an emotional terrain that offers the reader any number of routes, all of them finally transcendental. I have the highest regard for Greenwald's poetry.--Jay Parini

THE HALF-LIFE is a terrific book. I love its formal dexterity and high intelligence. The poems enact the intricate rhythms of thought and feeling, building sometimes toward anxiety and sometimes toward the expression of a mind deep in memory, meditation, regret, or travel. Roger Greenwald has created interiorities that are musically engaging while evoking a brilliant and complex personality.--Kevin Prufer