BIRD and TREE / IN PLACE

Bird and Tree/In Place, by Peter Weltner, is one book of poems composed of two. Its epigraph is taken from the English Romantic poet, John Clare: to "turn the blue blinders of the heavens aside/To see what gods are doing." In Weltner's book, the gods are such fundamental powers and presences as the past, memory, human existence in place and time, passion in all its senses, and what glimpses of transcendence humanity is allowed to see. It is a poetry of quest and questioning, of a late life looking back, of form and freedom pondering those essential things long pondered before us.