This slender volume, The Light Within the Light: Portraits of Donald Hall, Richard Wilbur, Maxine Kumin, & Stanley Kunitz by Jeanne Braham, with engravings by Barry Moser (David R. Godine, 2007) is a joy to hold, to look at, and to read. Braham’s prose is both polished and lively, and she succeeds in her aim of creating short (twenty pages or so) portraits of four New England poets whose work matters to her. It is a difficult and precise art, knowing what to include and what to leave out, and Braham knows unerringly which lines to include. This concision makes her prose a natural companion with the engravings of master engraver and book illustrator Barry Moser, a transplant to Massachusetts. (See some of his ambitious projects at the site of his Pennyroyal Press.)

I came to this book already knowing the poetry of Hall, Wilbur, Kumin, and Kunitz, but I think that this fine portraiture (which includes poems and excerpts from interviews for each poet profiled) would make a good introduction to this quartet of complex writers, too, for someone who did not know much about them but wanted to know a little more and was uncertain where to begin a new acquaintance.

Regarding the Poem “Lemon-Lime”: Today’s poem is a fictional conflation of memories of being young and often mute, about the pain that comes from uncertainty and not knowing when, whether, or how to speak out, and how to know if speaking up helps or perhaps might cause more damage, even if the right words can be found in the right moment. Today, when I am no longer young (older than the Wife of Bath!), the pendulum has swung the other direction, and the more difficult thing, at times, is to bite my tongue. Same problem and same pain of uncertainty.

Until tomorrow,

LESLIE