Not Many Love Poems tells the stories of a life, the stories kept close
to the heart: long friendships and shorter love affairs, close bonds of
family scattered across transatlantic distances, passion and loss. Loved
friends and family, the living, the dead: vital presences.
From recollections of childhood and adolescence on Long Island to warm,
unsentimental evocations of the new life-stage of grandparenthood, from
adventures with lovers to a journey through breast cancer treatment,
Linda Chase writes of a life richly lived, with wit, candour and a
feisty energy. At the centre of the collection is a sequence of poems
composed during a close friend's final year. An account of grief and
love, it celebrates the gift of 'numberless, glorious, blessed days', in
which 'our stories give themselves away'.
Cover Painting by Joseph St. Amand. Private Collection. Reproduced by
kind permission