Amazon.com Review
In "Prayer," William Corbett offers a good example of why his work is so appealing. He writes, "When white haired / unsteady on my feet / near deaf, half blind / soon to breathe my last / may I still enjoy / the guilty pleasure / come from a movie / into bright summer sun." Corbett's trademark qualities are all here: the delicate balancing of life's scales between misery (the speaker's anticipated decrepitude, in this case) and joy (the stolen indulgence of a matinee), the communal sharing of a solitary pleasure, and the poem's acoustic tightness (note how the poem's sounds become more bold with each line, from those whispery ws at the beginning to the alliteration at the poem's close). This collection reprints Corbett's book-length poems and includes his haiku-influenced poetic snapshots, as well as many fine lyric meditations.