In the Shadow of Beauty

Gail Peck's In the Shadow of Beauty reminds us that the sharing of memory is an essential aspect of love: "When this photograph slid / through the slot, they looked at it / and must have smiled again / at the radiance of that moment." Yet, these moments are deepened by awareness of their shadows: "I was driving and looking / straight ahead, opening a letter that never came." Indeed, even their absence: "The opposite of a photograph / is what I desire, // a blank, a complete black-out." Yet, this collection perseveres in love, ultimately a collection of remembrance in confrontation with pathos and impermanence, "and isn't that why we love them, / their beauty, the petals that will fall."-Michael Collins, author of AppearancesGail Peck's poems use family photographs as both story and lens. With quiet force she asks the important, startling questions of meaning and memory that insist equally on revelation and mystery. In the Shadow of Beauty brings to glorious life moments threatened with extinction.-Amelie Prusik, author of Light Sister, Dark Sister