Between One Future and the Next

Daigon's poems are acts of noticing, exaltation and love. In straightforward language and familiar images, she takes pleasure in likenesses and delights in transformation of scale and of time. In some poems, memory reaches back to a 1930s childhood and to the lives of immigrant parents. As the edge of a quilt becomes ``a trail outlining the long foothills,'' so generations pass on to each other the glances, gestures, objects and acts that constitute meaning. Too often Daigon's closure seems intrusive or constricting. ``A single bird tests the air'' is precisely observed and bears the weight of emotion, but the same bird ``reminding us today is all there is'' is vatic. Although her capacity for celebration and grief sometimes strains against her short lines, Diagon gently and steadfastly approaches the boundaries between the known and the forgotten, and illuminates ``how we dance along the slipstream of the past.'' (Feb.)