Now, Then

Illusions and delusions, joys and jokes, mysteries of memory and temporal paradox figure in Andrew McNeillie's collection. Here are sequences of bird poems, and tree poems, lines from an autobiography, lines from America, and poems about old age, in elegiac, ironic, and even vitriolic mode. These poems are about being and longing, belonging and not belonging in the world, past or present, now or then. They are about having and not having a home to go to. Haunted by the rapt, rural and wilderness gaze of childhood, youth and young manhood, the poems in "Now, Then" express worlds and times past of immediate sensual being and seeing "then" - "bubble-rapt" - in a "sound-warp ...like a dipper submerged in a rushing pool" - before the world caught up with their author: now counting his blessings, cursing his luck as time flies faster in life's dark wood.