If reading poetry could be compared to walking through a garden, marveling at this flower or that, the shape of the hedge just beyond, the bee busily tending to a bloom - one can see this walk is best taken in solitude. If these poems were to nourish my own soul, that is how I wished to experience them. Perhaps a light shone here or there. Perhaps a hedge made more conspicuous by the path laid before it. There is an art to a beautiful garden such that the guide is invisible. But the guide was there in its planning all along. The pilgrim brings his or her own experiences, their history with them. And their own impressions are taken away. If the course was delicately set, before being left to the pilgrim following it, all that is seen is beauty.
The way I experienced the enormous amount of very personal information the two editors included about themselves - their love story, their children, their work, their families - was as if a constant chatter built up around me during that peaceful garden exploration. I could not, then, divorce my bliss at "this flower" from the story of how my guide through the garden had seen such a flower at age five; or the buzzing bee from the story about his daughter being stung at college. Or the joy at the coy curve of the topiary from a story about the hedge the person stood near when he proposed. All those sampled stories I’ve just shared are fictional, but similar in nature to those shared in this book’s essays. The details of the personal stories repeated throughout the twenty essays in this book crowded into my enjoyment of the poems they claim to reference, in a similar way. I struggled with my reaction, but in the end I could not escape my conclusion that the editors’ private details did not belong in a volume of poetry if the volume existed to open poetry to other people’s souls. Simply put, there is no room left for the reader.
In essence there are two books within the one. The love story the two editors experienced and write of here - their work and family lives before, how the two met, their shared love - is moving enough. Isn’t it always when someone finds their "soulmate?" But I can’t think how it belongs within a poetry assortment, or how it elucidates the poems for a reader. It tells the story of these two people. But how does that reflect for the reader, when the reader does not know these two people? Is a personal story necessary, to illustrate loss? Is it not likely each reader has experienced loss and is familiar with it?
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