Merging The Sacred And The Mundane
While prose rises organically from the everyday, poetry with its long tradition of “nightingales and psalms” has about it something transcendent — something, we might say, of the sacred. In this way the prose poem, child of two worlds, serves to bring together, at long last, the sacred and the mundane.
Robert Alexander masters the prose poem métier in this collection of pieces tied to the natural world in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and to the remnant memories of his father, baseball players, past lives and lovers, ghostly sightings, and unforgettable places. Particular moments are crystallized in thoughts captured with words.
“Yesterday was one of the last true spring days around here before summer comes along and fills the air with moisture, the sun too hot at midday to stay out in for the two or three hours it takes to paddle to the river at the head of the marsh from the gravel parking lot down at the end of the dirt toad that School Street becomes if you follow it long enough, way off behind the shed where the highway department stores its winter plows.”