Midlife Calculus: Poems

by Britt Kaufmann

80 pages, Paperback

Published September 6, 2024

Reviews

[Shirley Showalter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the title of this book and the title poem "Midlife Calculus." My last math classes were advanced geometry and trigonometry. And I took them nearly 60 years ago! Since I never took calculus, there are equations and symbols that passed me by in this work. But I know enough about the language of math to recognize many of the allusions and puns, which made reading this book a playful experience, eye-opening in many ways. Willa Cather titled one of her books "Not Under Forty," referring to the fact that she was not writing for the young and did not think they were capable of comprehending her work until they grew older. As an elder, I think a lot about age too, so I resonated a lot with the title poem and found age to be a strong theme in many of these poems. Here's one of my favorites:

Halo

Call the old lady eccentric when
she raises her hands to stay
scything blades
from mowing down dandelions.
Give the bees the first fruits of the season:
Sunny golden discs
given time, also go grey —
spheres of tenuous tangents
waiting to be born aloft
on the breath of a child.