The Life Beside This One: Poems

Poetry. The poems of Lawrence Raab are accessible yet mysterious, their complexities an aspect of (and sometimes hidden by) their clarities. The title of his ninth collection suggests both the life we live and another life alongside--what might have been but wasn't, yet remains in the imagination. The casual tone, Mark Strand has written of Raab's work, the offhand remark, are not only the means by which sense establishes itself, but also the way it take on a miraculous resonance. There is no poet who brings more companionability to the uncanny than Lawrence Raab. THE LIFE BESIDE THIS ONE is full of reasons to be scared to death, but drawn with an exquisite equilibrium where you'd least expect. The door out in these poems is never the door in. This is an art that shows us how an extraordinary imagination can be the crux of a great humanity, even a basis for hope and comfort.--Dean Young