The poems in this collection were written during the past year and are arranged in roughly chronological order. My intention in writing the poems was to construct a truthful recreation of experience which would evoke corresponding feeling. By selecting and ordering details of ordinary occurrences, I hoped to create microcosmic situations. The use of literary, mythological, and biblical allusions aided me in this endeavor. These, like all poems, should be read aloud, for the sound of words was a prime consideration in their making. The beauty of poetry, I believe, lies in the expression itself, the art born of ordinary experience and chiseled by the tool of language. My attempt was to create something pleasurable and universal from the raw material of experience. Having begun writing Shakespearean sonnets as a challenge, I soon found that the strict meter and rhyme scheme were excellent aids in producing a poem from a germinal idea. Hence, more than a few that follow are in this mode.