David Perkins

I May or May Not Love You David Perkins

The poems in I May or May Not Love You reflect the author's belief that all of the history of poetry is there for the looting. You'll find Marianne Moore lurking in "I Should Have No Doubts," and Ezra Pound hanging out in "Meditation in the Color of C;" Homer beached in "Sentiment for a City," and W. B. Yeats bar-hopping in "Aging Out," among others. And while he believes that all schools of poetry have something to teach, it's better to stay in class and go on assimilating rather than graduate. It's the music of words that matter here: the "banging of consonants" the "rolling vowels," and the assonance and alliteration and the "contrapuntally chimed rhymes, off-key and off-kilter," as they wander the terrain; Paris, Philadelphia, Denver; gazing at clocks and mirrors, listening to Tchaikovsky, playing the lottery, looking askance at Death, and cross-examining love.