In The Disappearing Trick, Len Roberts wrestles with the loss of loved
ones--whether that loss be through death, a son moving away to college,
or simply how people fade from our lives and memories. Hybrids of the
narrative and lyric form, these poems are models of indirect statement
that have, as Sharon Olds has said, "emotional courage, powerful music,
and a deep balance." Like the light shining on a face, or a girl's thigh
back in a sixth-grade class, the poems often come as Proustian
flashes--lasting just a second, but seeming eternal--amid an increasing
darkness.