One Summer Evening at the Falls

Book excerpt: "In One Summer Evening at the Falls, Peter Campion writes about modern love. In narrative poems and traditional lyrics, in both formal and free verse, he writes from a surprising array of perspectives: desire and loss, betrayal and guilt, and commitment and renewal. Voices proliferate in these poems, translation gives way to found speech, autobiography trades places with dramatic monologue, and casual storytelling takes on an almost ritual intensity. For all his meticulous, formal patterning, however, Campion remains open to spontaneity and disruption. He renders the people in his poems with the depth and distinctiveness they deserve, and represents messy, contemporary life with a vivacity that suggests that the times we live in, for all their depredations, may also be worthy of our love. Campion looks at how love both undoes us and makes us who we are. Throughout, we see Campion balancing virtuosic writing with classical sturdiness. It's a surprising look at contemporary intimacy, and Campion's most far-reaching collection of poems to date"--