Double Going

In Double Going, Richard Foerster's tightly chiseled poems are rife with a doubling of images and motifs that reappear like musical phrases sounding in different contexts. The title speaks to the dual nature of love and anger that a son feels toward his father. 

"With the formal virtuosity that has always marked his work, Richard Foerster turns his gaze to the conundrum of childhood trauma, the stain of the past, our instinct sometimes to erase it, sometimes to brandish it—a tattoo. It is the doubleness of desire itself, finally—bodily and psychological--in which a thing can be 'luminous: because of what is ruined.' Double Going casts a light as slant with wisdom as it is pitched with grace." —Carl Phillips

Alba
The thought grinds against
thought, improbable brew:
he, an Italian in silk,
the Forum choked with the rush-
hour, waspish buzz of Rome.
Yet love was there. —My eyes

open on layered heights,
twinned histories—petty
and imperial: He strode
beside me, barrel-chested
at forty-six, his voice
intimate, like leaves at dawn.