The probable world

Stephen Dunn called Lawrence Raab's last book "a superb collection . . . Raab's poems evoke a world both recognizable and dreamlike, a world of slippery realities told from self-questioning perspectives." With this collection, Raab has surpassed his earlier accomplishments.His concerns range from dreams to space aliens, from the death of Shelley to the nature of friendship, from Hamlet to high school. Figured in landscapes both real and imagined--the probable worlds of our lives--these elegant poems form a meditation on what separates the actual from the possible. Of his previous collection, the National Book Award judges wrote, "Not often in today's poetry has our mortal circumstance become so magical." In his new book, the quiet clarity of Raab's voice moves calmly into the large, unanswerable mysteries of being--what our lives might become, or could have been but never were.… (more)