This Late in the Season

In his sixth collection, Bay Area poet Robert Lavett Smith offers a lucid and compelling view of how to respond to getting older and facing uncertain health, limited mobility, and increasing solitude-conditions we all share sooner or later if we're lucky enough to survive. These moving and carefully crafted poems chronicle, in a stunning return to the free verse that characterized his earliest work, both his challenges and triumphs over the past several years, during which he has relied more than ever on the discipline of writing to provide purpose and direction. There is deep sadness here, and indelible loneliness, but sudden transcendence and profound gratitude as well. This Late in the Season offers an intimate glimpse into a writer who finds, in the autumn of the spirit, cause to rejoice.