cover image Neighbor Blood: Poems

Neighbor Blood: Poems

Richard Frost. Sarabande Books, $12.95 (88pp) ISBN 978-0-9641151-5-6

Frost, a jazz drummer and English professor, sets his first collection in 20 years in the world of visceral experience rather than abstract matter. In the title poem, an abused woman seeks refuge in the poet's childhood home, only to be followed there by her husband, who smashes his fist through the window. ""...it's a long time/ since that neighbor blood was wiped up,'' Frost observes; ""...maybe it's part/ of my blood now, or yours, or part of anybody's."" In another, a couple whose children are grown falls asleep to the ""thin bleating baby call"" of a rabbit caught by a predator. Frost's strengths lie in the hinges of his poems where the reader can feel the deep connections that motivate his work. Usually, mortality lurks within these links, whether it's reminiscence of stroking a sleeping son, of a first haircut or of a brother dying of cancer. His tone is not pity but a wry, mellow compassion: ""And yet I love you,"" he writes of a drunk brother who has disrupted a party, ""and so I must wait/ until you're dead to publish this."" Frost's pithy, epigrammatic style finds strength in silences as well as words. (Oct.)