A Garland of Many Years

To some readers the poems will seem unusual as love poems because they do not idealize love and marriage. Their strength lies in their honesty and intimacy and in the openness to the pain and self-understanding that both ardor and conflict ("We, we throve on friction") can produce. This is a relationship in which each knows the other too well to be assuaged by a sentimental lyricism. For this special edition, twelve of Doreen's photographs from their travels together have been included, so that her sensibility may be present, too, as an artist in her own right. Donald's handwritten poems are reproduced both in facsimile and in type.