These poems re-enact a mighty struggle between love and its nemesis, fear. Rage, the fruit of fear, fights to bar the door to love, for its own protection. Some stanzas form a Greek tragedy unimaginably compressed into a half a dozen lines. There’s nothing quite like it; it is a deep well on fire, seeking nothing less than the absolute truth which will finally subdue the fury bequeathed us by the past. That truth, the poet knows, is love; but how, like Jacob wrestling all night with the angel, we fight against it!