Between Wings: poems

by James Long

The author has been privileged to encounter and study with poets James Wright, John Logan, W.S. Merwin, John Unterecker, Galway Kinnell and others. The deeply personal lyrics in Between Wings, written over a period of 30 years, reflect those influences, as well as the author’s reading of poets like Rilke, Plath, and the Deep Image poets. The shadow of a woman presides over the poems -- usually in the form of elegy or lament. Taken together, the poems enact the archetypal myth of separation and return in terms of the speaker's own history. They speak throughout from a perspective at the border between self and other, solitude and union, the darkness and the light -- seeking a state of transcendence-in-union glimpsed and longed for but always remaining just beyond realization -- "where the jewel of absolute darkness shines and shines / and all the masters of the light go blind."

78 pages, Paperback

Published August 11, 2008

Reviews

[wulvz · Rating 4 out of 5]

My mother was born and raised on the islands of Hawaii, I purchased this from a used bookstore in Fullerton not knowing it was so grounded in the experience of Hawaii.

The language is beautiful, James Long is an incredible talent. I think I was searching for more pain when I feel like the center of his work is beauty (which shines incredibly throughout this). There were moments of really intense sadness that stood out most to me, felt the most vulnerable, but I found the majority of this to be too masked by nature to fully make me feel things.

Overall a good read, I’m happy purchased it.