ANTIPODES

I defy anyone to read “The Girl” or “Out of the Gutwein” without a visceral shock of terror recoiling despair and a palpable sense of relief in escaping such fates. “There but for fortune . . .”—indeed! One may hear echoes of Roethke Kunitz Stafford and Cummings but this is a distinctive voice of a master poet. I envy Paul L. Stebbing’s first time readers the rich banquet that awaits them. Antipodes is an illuminating and visionary reminder that the universe while it may not meet our mundane goals is ever a source of surprise and wonder mystery and redemption.