Another Reason

The poems in Carl Dennis’s new collection assume that our efforts to reason with ourselves and with others about what matters to us are necessary to escape the purely private point of view, to provide the houses we live in with doors and windows. These poems enact a drama of attempted persuasion, as the poet confers with himself, with intimates, and with strangers, if only in the hope that by defining differences more precisely one may be drawn into a genuine dialogue. As the poet asserts and questions his own authority, encountering a wide range of competing claims from other voices, we find ourselves included in a conversation that deepens our notion of the human community.