Winter's Journey

Stephen Dobyns’s fourteenth collection of poems embodies a hardheaded art that practices an unremitting faith in the power of words. By turns humorous, sadly ironic, furious, and wise, the poems in Winter’s Journey are delivered in a precise, straightforward voice unafraid of pointing out that the emperor isn’t wearing clothes. Dobyns uses a sharp wit to introduce profound narrative meditations on love, politics, and art. His thrillingly absurdist cast includes Chekhov, Kant, Bashō, a werewolf, a possum, and an unforgettable rhinoceros (in a poem that is not at all about a rhinoceros). While Dobyns walks his dog on the beach, or otherwise goes about his life, he ponders “the imponderables” and with fierce dedication tells hard-won truths concerning what the world and our experiences in it can teach us about how to live.