Each person lives but a single life--yet this is not wholly true. While
our lives progress as a result of the choices we make--this career, that
husband, this town, that house--we are left imagining a life we might
have lived. If we are defined by our choices, in what ways are we
limited by them? What of the spiritual lives we lead, the inner lives
that others cannot truly know? Which life is truest?
A woman recalls her special bond with her father and compares it with
her ties to other men; a man copes with his unloved life and finds a way
to secretly inherit it; after making love for the first time, a young
woman wishes to go back in time, erase what she's done.
In readable, finely wrought, resonant, and memorable poems about the
nature of longing and disappointment, desire and betrayal, pleasure and
sorrow, The Other Life explores the dualities in life that every
person experiences.