The Colors of Infinity (North Star Line Poetry Series)

The Colors of Infinity is Donald Everett Axinn's fourth book of poems. In it, one sees the themes of the previous three books restated and transformed. As ever, Axinn pursues the theme of flight -- literal and imaginative flight -- often centering the poem in a narrative of self-exploration and discovery. Written in simple, sensuous language, Axinn's poetry has through the years developed into a fine instrument -- highly individual, characterized by sharp images and arresting turns of phrase.

In The Colors of Infinity, Axinn stakes out the parameters of his life in poems that summon his parents and grandparents in their passages from Russia to America, that address his children, that explore the meaning of fatherhood and responsibility. Axinn's love of nature is apparent in these poems, as is his avocation as amateur pilot. There are also a generous number of love poems here, often centered in the metaphor of flight.

Axinn ( Against Gravity ) addresses many of the same themes that have occupied his previous collections--love, death, the physical and metaphysical aspects of the universe--with a wide-eyed, appreciative simplicity that welcomes us into each poem. Once inside the poet's world, however, the reader will likely be disappointed by his unremarkable insights. "The Orphan" contemplates the emotional precariousness of a child's world: "Love can abandon, / the pain and destruction / tearing, cataclysmic." The poems about nature have a cliched, greeting-card quality to them. In "Encounter with an Old Friend," the poet enjoys a brief meeting with a chipmunk: "I would have offered him eternal friendship / And the place of honor in my heart and home." On the other hand, two poems about the poet's dead father are particularly resonant reflections on the loss of a cherished guiding influence. Axinn, himself a pilot, deals in several poems both with the worldly pleasures of plane flight and the supernatural implications of traveling through air: "We do hang / onto some wave to the outer edge / of the Big Bang / perhaps we will learn more about / God."
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