Since Then

Sheila Bender's new volume Since Then is a remarkable poetic account of the way a human being can transform mortal heartbreak into a sustaining love of the world. Sonically lush, elegantly imaginative, and formally diverse, the poems act as direct and indirect milestones in the life of a mother looking back on the life of a son who died decades ago. Pushing courageously beyond the keening of maternal pain, they depict her path forward into a radical appreciation of the present moment. Guided by four epistolary prose poems addressed to her son, the book is alive with both her striking self-examining lyrics about him as well as more outward-looking poems about the grace of our natural environment and the enhancing particularity of things.