by Elise Goldsmith
120 pp; $10.00, paper;
ISBN 0-920999-32-8
“How old is youth
How young is age
How false is truth
How quiet rage?”
Elise Goldsmith’s spare, elliptical verse gives rare insight into the daytime shadows and night-time illuminations of a woman writer in her aging years. Whether writing about Edith Piaf, the Persian Gulf War, or the rewards and difficulties of marriage, Goldsmith is always asking us to look more deeply, and more kindly. Delicate, ironic, and gently humorous, these poems touch the heart with their musings on war, old age, social justice, and the enduring power of love.