Days of Wonder: New and Selected Poems

In this generous selection, Grace Schulman moves from “the altering light” of earthly experience to the possibility of the miraculous. In the celebrated love poem “The Present Perfect,” she sees “wildflowers / poking through gravel cracks in our neighbors’ driveway / slender but fortunate, built to last their day,” and stanzas about an El Greco painting close with “one beam that God devised, before the / sun, would have shown us the world in one glance.” Schulman’s work so far evolves from a vision of unity expressed in her first collection, BURN DOWN THE ICONS. Her second book, HEMISPHERES, opens with a beautiful blessing, and “has that first requisite of poetry — the world comes alive in the work . . . There is nothing familiar about this poet’s genius” (New York Times Book Review). The selections from FOR THAT DAY ONLY contain vivid scenes of New York in the tradition of Whitman, Crane, and Moore. THE PAINTINGS OF OUR LIVES, Schulman’s most recent book, includes a sonnet sequence that calls on the art of many cultures to illuminate the universality of grief. The ten new poems that complete this breathtaking volume attest to this poet’s gifts for her craft and for the expression of praise.