by James Brasfield ’79
Published by Louisiana State University Press (2022)
In Cove, the compulsive intensity with which James Brasfield seeks to capture a fleeting moment’s imagery, “to choose a song sown / for the moment,” imbues his poems with a sense of urgency and movement. By exploring the translation of the sensory world into art, Brasfield faces the passage of time and the transitory nature of experience, thought, and memory. The poems find “angles of vision” to rescue a present instant in its essential fluidity, to go deep enough, without distraction, into the moment and reveal touchstones of being. Throughout Cove, Brasfield embraces the enduring effort to create an experience of language that is rich, lasting, and true, as life speeds into and through the future.