Living Things: Collected Poems

The last book of poems from Anne Porter, the widow of painter Fairfield Porter, was a 1999 National Book Award finalist An Altogether Different Language. This book reprints the 80-odd poems of that collection and adds 44 more of Porter's beautiful hymns to light, to friends and family, and to God, ""an aeon / Of refining fire."" Porter writes what might best be called plainsong: short, unadorned works that, like gospel or folk music, cut directly to the ambiguous heart of things. Among the new poems, there is ""A Short Prayer"" to Mary, paeans to friends Emmett Kelly and Terry Berrigan (as well as to ""3 Birds,"" ""The Roofs of Paris"" and ""The Song of the Wren""), and depictions of everything from ""A Painter's Life"" to ""A Turtle's Shell"" (the two poems appear back-to-back). It is a beautiful book, one in which fans of Virginian Hamilton Adair, Amy Clampitt and James Schuyler (often a guest at the Porter home) will find ""That secret other poetry / Which never will be written.""