Manifest Review

We’ve traveled these years through varied country,

crossed the long plains somberly,

labored over jagged mountains

toward waterhole and Joshua tree

to reach again our western shore

and glide with fronds, with schooling fish,

at ease in the surge of the moon-minded sea.

Barry Spacks has taught writing and literature for many years at M.I.T. and UCSB. He’s published individual poems widely, plus stories, two novels, eleven poetry collections, and three CDs of selected work. His first novel The Sophomore has just been brought back into print in the Fabe & Faber Finds series. His most recent poetry collection (Cherry Grove, 2012) presents a selection from ten years of e-mail exchanges with his friend Lawrence E, Leone. It’s called A BOUNTY OF 84s (the 84 being a stanza limited exactly to 84 characters, echoing the traditional notion that the Buddha left us 84,000 different teachings because humans have so many different needs, are all of them so differently the same).