Other Worlds

Other Worlds is true to its title, from a look at our everyday joys and griefs as interpreted by the Mars of classic science fiction and the crazy domain of quantum physics; to studies of the many conflicting realities that America uneasily accommodates in a time of pandemic and protests; to elegiac poems informed by the realms of memory, ghosts, and imagined afterlives. From a poem of one line to a sequence of twelve sections, from comic hijinks to despair, and from private revelation to public declaiming, this is a bravura performance by the only poet to have twice received the National Book Critics Circle Award and who, at age seventy-three, is writing at the height of his powers. Excerpt from “Last Song”I choose the other way,with heels dug in.I vote for screamingyearningly. For heading into the afterlifeagainst the grain of this one. For a slowing downto the pace of a person too absorbedin the glory and gritto work up any hurry for departing it.