Lifting Stones

<p>A widower presents a poetry collection about grief and love. The first section of this emotional book <em>Memories</em> explores the 'dusty not-quite-living museum of our lives.' Some of its recollections are quite recent such as in <em>Love in the Time of Corona</em> which finds the speaker partnerless sheltering in place and eating frozen vegetables during the Covid-19 pandemic. In another poem he compares navigating love to crawling through an electric fence: 'You finally learn how it feels / to be knocked silly with almost no warning / and find yourself lying alone on your back / stupefied.'</p><p><br></p><p>The second section <em>Griefs and Losses</em> centers on themes of mortality as the speaker revisits the end of his wife's life and wonders what his own posthumous legacy will be. The final <em>Turning Points</em> section contemplates the 'absurd time-travel odyssey' of life in general and the arbitrary ways of nature weather and death. The author ends with a meditation on his unknown future which he imagines as a mix of beautiful experiences and temporary happiness. </p><p><br></p><p>Considering it all though he concludes that it's appropriate to 'Rejoice.' Stanfield's observations on love and loss are authentic and insightful. Regarding dating disappointment for example a speaker asks 'Which is wrong: / The reality or the expectations?' Of enduring relationships he wisely muses 'No vulnerability without trust / no trust without truth / no truth in a tight grip.' He's also delicately honest about death; a speaker recalls how in the moments after his wife died he was 'amazed at the quiet / and stillness the soul leaves behind.' The poet's descriptions of physical places are also evocative as when the moon paints 'a wrinkled twinkled streak / on darkened waves.'...</p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(71 70 70 1)>A lovely relatable set of poems for the heartbroken and helpless romantics. --Kirkus Reviews</span></p>