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by Peggy Sapphire

In her second book of poems, Peggy Sapphire again shows herself to be one of the most humane, honest, generous-hearted poets now writing, and one of the most spirited. In the End a Circle will give the rueful heart a change of mood. Although these poems show how much there is to rue in the world and although Sapphire holds back nothing in telling of it, she also writes of her joys with enormous gusto, reveling in sensual pleasures of all sorts. Always the poet’s passion for social justice and her love of others shine through, be those others children, the elderly, or loons on a midnight lake who against all odds continue to prevail. She demonstrates in this new book that she too continues to prevail. She is one who has not been undone by the pain and sorrow she has experienced; one who is incapable of bitterness; one who when faced with an ending, turns to the embracing circle of loved ones; and one who, though wise from all she has experienced, in the end circles back to the sort of unadulterated passion she felt before the fall. She becomes once more the “fisherman’s daughter / breath-taker / love-maker / barefoot again.” The gift of simplicity and directness the poet shows in the hours and days described in her poems is also evident in her writing style. These poems are a delight in their lack of clutter and pretension. There is purity here, a purity often lacking in contemporary poetry; and there is a Merwin-like spontaneity to the flow of thoughts and images.