Maitreyabandhu''s thematically varied debut collection includes poems of spiritual transcendence as well as meditations on love, memory and sexuality. Sometimes comic, often elegiac, the poems convey the pleasures and terrors of childhood as well as the mystical world of fable. Truthful, tender, and written with a kind of wonderment, the collection culminates in ''Stephen'', an extended sequence of poems exploring a clandestine, and finally tragic, relationship between two boys. For Maitreyabandhu -a Buddhist teacher and member of the Triratna Buddhist Order for over twenty years -The Crumb Road is an image for the unreliability of memory, and for the vital thread of human value that connects us to the spiritual world. Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
