Falling Through the Music

<p>In <i>Falling Through the Music</i> his fifth major book of poetry Mark Halperin gives us consolation guidance and companionship while delivering an accomplished meditation on the first real glimpses of the limits on a life. Displaying an agility of formal invention--he moves easily from a Whitmanesque and witty litany to rhymed quatrains--Halperin deftly melds technique to theme. As in Someone Pausing he is able to place us in the mind of someone--any one of us--who has stood on an island in the street fully attentive and present knowing nothing stays not even the observer. </p>