Waiting for the Alchemist - Mark Perlberg - Bog

Direct, tactful, and compassionate, the poems in Waiting for the Alchemist, published posthumously, tell us things we need to knowabout art, history, nature, love, and life. Wholly without pretension, these poems make us feel that we have discovered the truth. The poet accomplishes this partly by his delicate touch with rhyme and assonance, partly by making himself seem almost an accidental instrument of the poem, and someone who just happens to be conveying it. The reader cannot help but respond with affection and gratitude. The title poem reminds us that the philosophers stone is more likely to turn up in our backyardor in our imaginationthan in a laboratory. The poems of the second section address history with restraint and tenderness, while those in section three explore contemporary lives. In the final section, Perlberg writes about his family, his friends, and himself. In the poem In My Next Life the poet writesperhaps smiling inwardlythat he will then be amiable, mostly, but large / and formidable, and adds, with a wink, Ill insist you be present / in my next lifeand the one after that.