This poem cycle pretty much has it all: the personal, the political,
the striking and the poignant. "The Washington Poems" immerses you into
the life and psyche of our nation's capital. Even the topical poems,
dealing with Jimmy Carter's rose garden strategy, the assassination of
Anwar Sadat and others, ring true today.
Stylistically, the writing is impressionistic in that you will not
notice the style but the effects in the mood created by it. Rhyme and
meter are slaves here to enchantment, through the incantation of the
verse.
"Sonnets for the Spanish" is a cycle of fifty sonnets in Shakespearean
form that chronicles the courtship by an older male poet of a beautiful
young woman, which is thus the reverse situation of the older Elizabeth
Barrett writing "Sonnets from the Portuguese" to younger Robert
Browning.
