Love If We Can Stand It

In this collection of his best poems, Bruce F. Kawin explores many aspects of love, from the romantic to the metaphysical and from sex to mourning. The breadth of voice and form is masterful, and the poems are bold and evocative. As complex as they are, they relate plainly to real life. The book includes a sestina about a harried woman, a sonnet sequence reimagined as a slide show, a menu of potential love stories, a lesbian epic set in modern Greece and reimagined versions of old horror films, all of them charged with startling, moving and convincing visions of love. With his unique tone and subject matter, his good stories, his striking insights and his fresh, vivid language, Kawin reinvents and revives the love poem.