Fred Poole's poetry does not rely on tricks to strike you right in the heart. But we have to meet him where he lives. He doesn't spare us, because he doesn't spare himself. He looks at his present state with clear eyes and reports on how he feels about it. Age and infirmity have been slowly reducing his movement in the outside world, stealing away freedoms that he used to take for granted, as most of us do. His condition now keeps him stationary in a place that he didn't choose and where he'd rather not be. It could happen to any of us. He speaks to us directly. He's not trying to teach us anything, for which I'm grateful. (There are so many wise and pretty posts on Facebook, and too many of these are platitudinous and useless.) He's doing something much more important. He's bearing witness to a life, to his life as he's living it now, to Life. The work is classically elegiac, as it's about loss, about the death of certain beloved things, so it's profoundly sad. Fred's poems are a rich offering. I'm grateful. Outside my rented flat, I see my cats curled in in a sunny spot on the veranda. Bombs are pummelling Kyiv. Fred is writing in the room he didn't choose and wondering about the lives of birds he sees out the window.
