Walking Backward

by Paul Lake

The intense lyrics and harrowing narratives of Walking Backward explore the values and obligations that bind people into neighborhoods and nations. In the title poem, a conscience-stricken, middle-aged draft-lodger reflects on the Vietnam era. "Seeing the Elephant, " a long narrative by a survivor of the Donner party tragedy, fuses fact, dream, and fantasy to give a hallucinatory shimmer to the recollections of Elizabeth Reed Murphy, the story's protagonist. As the poem traces the tangled story of her life from innocent girlhood to wise old age, it's shifting movements explore how memory fashions meaning from experience.

88 pages, Paperback

First published July 15, 1999

Reviews

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fine metrical poems, many in blank verse.