The Way We Go On

Plainspoken, unassuming, the poems in Charles Gillispie''s first collection record the pain of the everyday, and the beauty, the hope. Though the vision is often dark, the language here is so alive with metaphor that the reader walks away with a sense of life''s ultimate vitality-and possibility. Gillispie''s is a world in which "Jays bully the light," "the sky . . . is interviewed by clouds;" a world in which "the smallest word can open a window." The Way We Go On is a large-hearted, accomplished debut.—Boyer Rickel