After Leaving Mr. Mendez

In After Leaving Mr. Mendez, a collection of poems, the first and last sections, To Havana and Half Way Back, which frame the manuscript, embrace the course of a relationship that is ultimately distilled to memory and longing. The second section, The Place I Ran From, epitomizes the way in which one's view of home alters and changes as time progresses. The third section, The Body, Traveling, illustrates the influence of travel and myth on one's life, and how other writers, such as Virginia Woolf and Galway Kinnell, influence another poet's work. After leaving someone, something, someplace, one gathers what falls and holds the debris against the light. These poems express the fear, sadness, joy, and surprise that come in canvassing that illuminated debris of our past, and the truth in words that mark the ordinary time in which we live.