Only as the Day Is Long: New and Selected Poems gathers powerful work from a major contemporary poetic voice. Drawn from five earlier collections and featuring twenty new poems, it offers a generous overview of a career devoted to capturing everyday life with unflinching clarity and tenderness.
These poems move through working-class America, kitchens and factories, family photos and hospital rooms. They linger on the textures of ordinary days, revealing how love, desire, grief, and resilience are woven into the smallest details. Lyrical yet grounded, the writing balances compassion with a sharp eye for the “dirt and mess” of real experience.
A central thread of the collection is a moving sequence of odes to the poet’s mother, a Depression-era woman portrayed as both ordinary and quietly heroic. Across the book, scenes of survival, healing, and intimate relationships are rendered with sensory richness and emotional precision.
Ideal for readers of contemporary poetry who value accessible language, narrative depth, and portraits of real lives, Only as the Day Is Long offers a resonant exploration of memory, family, and the hard-earned beauty found in everyday moments.
