The Morning After Burns Night

The poems in The Morning After Burns Night call to mind D. H. Lawrence's phrase for his own poems, "acts of attention." Joyce Wilson peers closely and deeply at details from nature and human nature, gleaned from a lifetime spent close to home on the South Shore of Boston, but also from far-flung travel. Everywhere evident is the formal adeptness the reader expects from a seasoned formalist poet, but there is far more than that here, as can be witnessed by the powerful sonnet crown "The Remnant of His Life," which is at the heart of the book. The conclusion of "Prose Poem: On Lichens" beautifully sums up the poet's spirit and enterprise: "When we take walks this winter, we plan to keep looking around for lichens in our favorite wandering places. Where lichens appear, we will stop, look, and take a measure of changes and renewal around us." -Bruce Bennett, author, Just Another Day in Just Our Town