Between My Eye and the Light Format: Paperback

“Hole torn in the language, / How shall we speak?” The first lines of the first poem in Paul Breslin’s artful second collection of poetry demand an answer, of both poet and reader, to the seemingly unspeakable tragedies of modern life. Between My Eye and the Light forms a beautifully insistent exercise in the power of language to engage experiences both mundane and profound. Breslin queries far-flung corners of experience for answers, engaging childhood, his longtime home of Chicago, small moments of life, and encounters with artists such Rainer Maria Rilke and Derek Walcott. The poems even query the volume’s opening question, How shall we speak? While pat answers elude us, poetry acts as a bulwark against cliché and cynicism, strengthening those who have the courage to question and explore.

Paul Breslin is professor emeritus at Northwestern University. His most recent book is a translation of Aimé Césaire’s The Tragedy of King Christophe, forthcoming this season in the Northwestern World Classics series. His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in Agni, American Poetry Review, American Scholar, Callaloo, New Republic, New York Times Book Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, TriQuarterly, Virginia Quarterly, and elsewhere. He has won six Illinois Arts Council prizes for literary essays and poems, and was twice winner of Poetry magazine’s George Kent prize.