cover image Poems for Paula

Poems for Paula

Frederick Morgan. Story Line Press, $14 (72pp) ISBN 978-1-885266-14-9

Morgan, a founder of the Hudson Review, which he now co-edits with his wife Paula Dietz, honors a 25-year love. This, his 10th poetry volume (first since 1987's New and Selected Poems), opens with a poem in which events of a day spent by a river capture love long shared. ``The sun tells stories/ to the restless river/ as the trees listen in./ The river is resistless-/ but the trees recall the rain's/ lisping insistent voice.'' Rooted in domestic life, rural and urban, most of the poems are gathered in sections titled ``Maine'' and ``New York'' (meaning Manhattan) where he has homes. This is a slender book: just 26 poems, usually on one or two pages, of eight to 40 lines. But Morgan's lines are cadenced, rich and thoughtful, his images vivid: ``a stream/ dark and serene in China,/ down which sleek goldfish dart and gleam'' is his vision (from his city apartment) of school busses on Park Avenue in the rain. Nearly every poem revolves-with grace and gratitude-around the couple or the beloved. At an Easter vigil service in the city, neighbors light candles at midnight: ``I, as always,/ take my flame from yours.'' (Dec.)