The Marble Bed by Grace Schulman, Paperback | Indigo Chapters

Grace Schulman, whom Harold Bloom described as one of the permanent poets of her generation," rises to new heights in these poems of lament and praise. The Sand Dancers refers to a couple dancing on a shore that is at once a shining turf and a graveyard of sea toss, of cracked shells, a skull-like carapace, and emerald weed. Here things sparkle with newness: an orchid come alive when rescued from a trash bin; the new year hidden in an egret's wing; Coltrane's ecstatic flight; a seductive, come-hither angel; a meteor's arc; a rainbow's painted ribbons; a glacial rock that glowers in moonlight. Even the tomb sculptures in an Italian cemetery sparkle with vitality. Schulman, grieving for her beloved late husband, believes passionately in the power of art to redeem human transience. Her faith in art enables her to move from mourning to joyful wonder of existence, as she gazes at photos of war dead, meditates on an injured world, and concludes: "Because I cannot lose things of this world / without losing the world, / I'll have to praise it."" | The Marble Bed by Grace Schulman, Paperback | Indigo Chapters