Lay Back the Darkness. Poems

Edward Hirsch's sixth collection is a descent into the darkness of middle age, narrated with exacting tenderness. He explores the boundaries of human fallibility both in candid personal poems, such as the title piece-a plea for his father, a victim of Alzheimer's wandering the hallway at night-and in his passionate encounters with classic poetic texts, as when Dante's Inferno enters his bedroom:When you read Canto Five aloud last night in your naked, singsong, fractured Italian, my sweet compulsion, my carnal appetite, I suspected we shall never be forgiven for devouring each other body and soul .