Premature Elegy by Firelight, by Roger Weingarten

Roger Weingarten is one of our most original and enduring poets. The richness of the poems gathered together in Premature Elegy by Firelight comes most significantly from the original and stunning regard the poet has for the complicated pain and beauty that is our family lives. There’s beauty too in the directness here: a said quality that is at once lyrical in its surprising leaps and sometimes wild juxtaposition of images, and narrative too for the way these poems move unflinchingly towards their astute and surprising inevitables. –Bruce Weigl