The Things of This World

Poems of celebration and meditation on the power and fragility of the world that allows for beauty, love, and sorrow.

Reading Michael Blanchard's The Things of This World, I was reminded again and yet again of Walt Whitman's famous line, "Who touches this touches a man." Blanchard's poems bring us into the presence of a genuinely humane person, a poet who speaks with the modesty of deep experience and well-honed craft. This poet practices what might be called a spiritual poetry, a poetry th...