Katy Bridge

This is a book is secretly about love. It doesn't say so, directly, yet it leads us through its many forms using an inspired choice of words: "Scary thought, trains and girlfriends." And when someone leaves a relationship: "Emptiness reliable as a broken bone" followed by: "I am the hollow reflection of your departure."

Son of a preacher man and a piano player, growing up in a small town in Central Texas, his dad reading Robert Frost to him, his mother playing Offenbach's Barcarolle which made him cry, acting in one act plays, playing in the All State Band, breaking his leg in football, getting jilted by a cheerleader, he had enough experience at 17 to already be a poet. Yet he waited until middle age, rocked by crisis, reaching for understanding, poetry seemed the smart thing to do.

The sensual moments in this book simply rise off the page: "You collected my tears in the teacup of your collarbone." and "It has taken a long time to get here past failures at love, at marriage, but sometimes, after all, there is this accident of grace."

Poetry should scare us a little. What poetry affirms, good poetry, is that on the other side of a scare there often surfaces a thread which keeps us pressing forward through angst and the paralyses of sorrow. That life-rope we seek is affirmed by beauty and the rigorous pursuit of truth: In "Fear and Resilience" the protagonist, in a pit of worry, remembers and recovers to her ear her mother's voice which calms the fright she was facing. That discovery could not have happened were it not for facing the problem head on. As Robert Frost says, "The best way out is always through."

Watts brings many talents. His subjects range from a birdhouse to a mirror in the hall, each approached with well-trained eyes and a reverence for the complicated journeys of the human spirit. How else could the right words come to interrogate the classical themes of love, loss and mortality? It took great courage to place himself within the spirit of a dying friend and record the illuminations found there as he did in the meditative and unique "Death Sequence." Something new came from that.

Thoughtful reflection guided by craft; Watts is well-equipped. Yet, one more quality is essential: a depth of spirit one gains by years of what Socrates calls, "The Examined Life." Being unafraid to approach our angels and our demons candidly as Watts courageously does in this collection, pays off. As Gary Snyder affirms, "To the real work/. . 'What is to be done'."