Songs My Mother Never Taught Me

Poetry. "This poet first writes: 'There was no struggle when I was born.' But clearly everything since then has gone into the burn of metaphor and memory, into ache and solace. Murray Shugars's poems turn on a fierce honesty, go into story, go into song. By way of his dark, dazzling 'Litany of Things Known,' we move through 'the distance between Heaven & Hell' from Charlie Parker's weeping at 'predawn birdsong' to 'cancer & smoke,' from an M-16 as lens and anchor to 'ice-glazed poplars' breaking in the woods, these flashes that amaze and sting until the world is richer and so much stranger"—Marianne Boruch.