In the Shadow of Beauty

<p><strong>Gail Peck'</strong>s<em> In the Shadow of Beauty</em> reminds us that the sharing of memory is an essential aspect of love: When this photograph slid / through the slot they looked at it / and must have smiled again / at the radiance of that moment. Yet these moments are deepened by awareness of their shadows: I was driving and looking / straight ahead opening a letter that never came. Indeed even their absence: The opposite of a photograph / is what I desire // a blank a complete black-out. Yet this collection perseveres in love ultimately a collection of remembrance in confrontation with pathos and impermanence and isn't that why we love them / their beauty the petals that will fall.</p><p><strong>-Michael Collins</strong> author of <em>Appearances</em></p><p></p><p><strong>Gail Peck</strong>'s poems use family photographs as both story and lens. With quiet force she asks the important startling questions of meaning and memory that insist equally on revelation and mystery. <em>In the Shadow of Beauty </em>brings to glorious life moments threatened with extinction.</p><p><strong>-Amelie Prusik</strong> author of<em> Light Sister Dark Sister</em></p><p></p><p></p>