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Kevin Walzer, a poet, poetry publisher, husband, and father.
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Mon, 26 Feb 2007
Book of the Day: Flaws by David Galef
David Galef's Flaws is a book of sharp, sometimes poignant humor and wit. Galef is not afraid to go for the laugh, a tendency all too rare in contemporary poetry. Yet his verse can take a sudden turn into deeper waters, as this poem exemplifies:
Night
His wife sends him out to shovel the snow,
But the ground outside is bare.
The door has shut. There’s nowhere to go.
All he can do is turn and stare
At the cloudy spot where the moon should be,
Marked by an uncertain trace.
If he squints, he thinks he just might see
The outline of a child’s face.
And so the man waits as he has all his life
For a lucky break, for his job,
A family, his lonely unsatisfied wife—
His joints begin to throb.
He reflects that his house is a hovel
In a world he never made,
When softly falling onto the shovel
A snowflake glints on the blade.
The turn in the last couplet is as delicate--and yet as sharp--as the snowflake on that blade. Good show.