Affirmation: poems

The poems in Affirmation find the remarkable in the seemingly ordinary, and, without glossing over the difficulties and hardships of living, articulate a hopeful vision of the world. In the poem "Telling the Bees," the speaker is "exhausted by the smoke of doubt and fear," and longs "to be stung again / by wonder, by joy." The poems in Steve Straight's book do just this for the reader.