Whether the high drama of clipping a little girl's fingernails or a meditation about a fly fixed in an unopened jar of jam, the poems in The Infants at the Shoreline range over a variety of small but precious revelations.
Children's fascination with new things carries the spirit of many of the poems. The literal infants at the shoreline, with their wonderment of sand and sea, personify the aesthetics of this book. The poems move from the lyrical innocence of children, bedtime stories about the fascinating horrors of Pompeii, early science fair efforts, to those engaging the challenges of adulthood and relationships.
But there is also innocence inherent in the plans and wishes of adults, how a couple parses the ideal city to move to but end up focused on their more immediate and local intimacies, or the epic effort and failure of installing simple track lighting. Children and adults alike look out over an ocean of promise and menace.
DIY could be the subtitle of these poems that express the efforts of each of us to light the remote pilot light to our daily efforts.
