Saint Peter and the Goldfinch

Jack Ridl returns with a collection of poems that mix deft artistic skill with intimate meditations on everyday life--curiosity, loss, discovery, joy, or the passing of the seasons. From poems derived from the author's personal history to thoughts on varied events and persons, from poems that attend primarily to the mystery of love and what one loves to what one can imagine in poetry, Saint Peter and the Goldfinch is the work of a talented and seasoned poet, one whose work comes out of the "plainspoken" tradition--the kind of poetry that, as Thomas Lynch puts it, "has to deliver the goods, has to say something about life, something clear and discernible, or it has little to offer"--back cover.