Point of View

The narrative, or experiential, points of view of the various poems shift frequently. The majority of the pieces in the collection are connected, in varying degrees, to the experiences of a male character as he moves from youth through adulthood into an elder state approaching, and contemplating death. Within that central framework, there are also shifts: from a young man’s point of view of experience (i.e. defined by newness and immediacy) through a more mature view (i.e. defined by a degree of perspective and questioning) into a view of the elder (i.e. defined by a sense of approaching endings). Other poems in the collection, however, are written from different points of view that seem more individualized – that is, less directly connected to the central experiences explored by the collection. “Visitors from Abroad,” for example (Section 2) emerges from the point of view...