<DIV>With nods to Brahms and Haydn, Pablo Neruda, Theodore Roethke, and Christopher Smart, Ralph Black's poems tell of a passion for being in the world, a desire to make meaningful contact with the sensuous, both natural and human. With beautifully accessible imagery, Black explores the territory of longing and loss, love and family, wild land and city street - amazed "that the world, even / this one, can offer / so little and / so much at once / and mean them both?" (from the book)</div>