When & If: New Poems

In When & If DeWitt Clinton presents extended elegies and eulogies that seem to arise from a single exhalation of breath. The poems mourn the loss of his beloved wife Jacqueline with the Covid pandemic as a global backdrop. One enjambed line leads to another without the formal constraints of punctuation or stanza breaks as Clinton creates a language of grief that is both personal and universal.

-Beth Copeland, author, Shibori Blue: Thirty-six Views of The Peak

DeWitt Clinton creates his own poetic road that is both intellectual and emotional. He creates landscapes that are impressive for their directness and sensitivity. When & If reads as new poems on age old themes, each with a twist that makes this book not only a must-read, but one to keep on your shelf in a prominent place and re-read.

-Zvi A. Sesling, former Poet Laureate of Brookline, MA and author, The Lynching of Leo Frank

"The art of losing isn't hard to master," according to Elizabeth Bishop, but DeWitt Clinton's new collection underscores the opposite - losing is prolonged and difficult, and we never quite know where we are within it. When & If vibrates and echoes with memories that feel simultaneously fleeting and yet somehow enduring. Clinton's a wise poet and this book is testimony to how a poet can face grief and pull out the beauty within it.

-Allison Joseph, author, Confessions of a Barefaced Woman, Lexicon, and Dwelling (Red Hen Press)

As DeWitt Clinton aptly suggests in When & If, we are on a merry-go-round. While we ride, we spiral from love, to loss, to longing for more. Clinton embraces both the eternal nature of the human soul and the temporal nature of our human body. In one beautiful message, he writes; "we just don't know what's next, do we?" From the great losses during the Covid pandemic to the singular losses in our own lives, Clinton unpacks the range of emotions and conversations, both public and private, we process during loss. I was moved by his reference early on to the power of air. That invisible element, upon which all life relies, is the secret of our continued existence. As it escapes us, Clinton brings it out as the merry-go-round continues. The loneliness of loss is filled with the tenderness of memory. Such sacred memories comfort us in the shadows.

-Rabbi David A. Lipper, D.D., Temple Sinai, Houston, Texas