Now and for a Time - John Fuller

Throughout his long and prolific career, John Fuller has been admired for the way in which he melds levity with serious reflection. In this beautiful new collection of twenty-one poems he proves himself, once again, a true master of this art.

They take us from birth to death: from a baby''s first delightful babblings, to the dignified, measured words of a man surveying his life and marriage, and looking forward into the unknown. There are moments of great joie de vivre, of pleasure in the earthy things of life; and yet, beyond, there is always a sense of a vaster, more elusive universe.

The snorting of the horses in a field in ''Dreams'', the egret on the rock in ''Sentinel'': these are nature''s mysteries. To make sense of these, we have language and music. Celebratory, playful, reconciled to the questions that will not be answered, these poems exude a miraculous kind of peace and understanding: ''A point of closure that allows the next/Inevitable sentence to begin''.