With Your Back To Half the Day

Poetry. Donald Morrill's new collection, WITH YOUR BACK TO HALF THE DAY, circles unexpected, compelling questions, intent on transporting their full measure to the reader (as if it might be revealed only in that company). Avid to understand how we get human every day, Morrill's poems meet Basho's challenge not to follow the footsteps of the old poets but to seek whatthey sought. This book rushes and retreats, feints and decides, tests and welcomes, and always branches. Distance joins things, Morrill writes, and, indeed, he is a poet of broad contact. The result is a volume laden with rambunctious splendors and meticulous reflections brought forth in Morrill's own hard-earned voicemusical, witty, perceptive, affecting.