Voyaging Out

Peter Abbs' new book, his tenth volume, divides into two parts. The first half, Peregrinations, offers an anthology of poems which range from the experience of love to memories of childhood, from philosophical reflections on art and poetry to the dramatic re-telling of other lives. The second part, Transformations, offers three sequences from three great poets in the tradition: Rumi, Dante and Rilke. These poems are not literal translations but work in the manner of metamorphoses.