Orders of Affection
(Carnegie Mellon, 1996)

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Praise for Orders of Affection

"These graceful poems are serious without being weighted, and emotionally rich without being rhetorical.  If they are nearly all shaped as elegies, they keep their losses in perspective: poetry may not be able to restore, but it can redeem.  Their lyricism is quiet because it is so disciplined, and it is clear because it understands that grief is only what we start with.  What we can end up with, sometimes, is poetry as good as this."  — Stanley Plumly

Once in Ohio 

I would have done            
            almost anything
Not to have had to
            see her joining me
That first time in
            the claw-footed tub
In Athens, her robe
            falling and a long
Red welt, the kind
            a bicycle chain
Can make, bristling over
            the ribs, the left
Side of her chest.
            She stood there,
And I could make out
            past her, drifting
Through the chute of light
            at the window, clusters
Of snowflakes like scraps
            of paper from a bonfire,
Lifted by their burning
            and then released.
I knew that everything
            had been changed,
And I was afraid, I was
            like a cedar fitted
For the winter with snow;
            and then she started to
Step in, and I helped her
            sit down facing me
As the water rose
            around us.