The Past Won't Stay behind You - Hardcover

Samuel Hazo likes to think of poetry as art in the present perfect - that tense in English from which events in the past continue into the present. Each poem in this collection, whatever the subject - travel, regret, love, death, war, or family - is firmly tied to a real history; all the poems begin in actual places and at specific times and continue on even into the life of the reader. Sometimes a poem ends with a kind of answer, sometimes in anger, sometimes in dismay or amazement, but every poem is a duel with reality.
Here is a poetry to challenge the spirit, to awaken the conscience, to assure the uncertain heart. It is, in the deepest sense, poetry of the world as it is.

Samuel Hazo is Professor of English at Duquesne University.