Black Valentine by David Abel

Description

ISBN: 9780925904577

Poetry: 32 pages

2006

This lovely addition to Chax Press’ line of chapbooks features Portland poet David Abel’s elegiac sequence on love and grief. Written in New York following the 1988 death of Robert Duncan but published in 2006, Abel’s poem takes as its point of departure a line from Christopher Marlowe, who writes: “Black is the beauty of the brightest day.” From this ambiguous, mournful line, Abel fashions a beautifully spare set of poems that encompass and intertwine concerns both philosophical and quotidian, displaying both sadness and acceptance in the face of death.