cover image Saints and Strangers

Saints and Strangers

Andrew Hudgins. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), $9.95 (82pp) ISBN 978-0-395-39383-3

Hudgins's well-nigh perfect first book considers the plight of a frail humanity in a universe that permits, or at any rate seems to permit, the existence of evil. ""Fire and St. Francis,'' for example, shows the saint attempting to make friends with Brother Fire by suffering it to burn as it will. The poems suggest that if Creation has a purpose, it is a mystery, and that its workings are the stuff of paradox. If that sounds like a complex philosophy, it needs to be said that the poems themselves are as plain, graceful and compulsively readable as they are resonant and profound. Both Hudgins's vision and his mechanics are impeccable. This is immediately and wholly satisfying and yet substantial enough for many readings. November