Googootz and Other Poems

The poems in Howard Faerstein's Googootz and Other Poems journey by their own inimitable logic, finding their way as they go, because "you keep travelling on / whether life invites you or not." In this wide-ranging volume of praise and protest, subtle humor and elegy, finches fly through fire, Hiroshima shadows a New England beach, space aliens reveal a secret connection to spaghetti and meatballs, a wasp and wind chimes conjure mystery "outside the borders of definition," and seemingly respectable citizens harbor "cavernous hate camouflaged like terrorist conviction." Even as Faerstein confronts the worst of our current moment, these poems "never refuse love's lure," never forget "the great glory" of creation. Googootz is a large-souled book that gives courage to "go on living." -Jay Udall, author of The Welcome Table and Because a Fire in Our Heads, winner of the X. J. Kennedy Prize