Not Till We Are Lost

William Wenthe's second collection of poetry is a personal amplification of a passage from Henry Thoreau's Walden, ""Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations."" Beginning with the necessary dislocation and loss that accompany adulthood, these strong and moving poems tell a story of a man's losing his way in the midst of personal tragedies -- the death of his parents and the end of a marriage -- only to discover the true depth of his connection with others and ultimately with the divine. In a variety of free verse, traditional forms, and sonnets, the poet begins to reassess his life and his art and considers the possibility that language may distance us from the real as much as bind us to it.

Both deeply personal and powerfully spiritual, Not Till We Are Lost strives toward the rediscovery of relations -- to family and lover, to culture, to environment. Whether in a desert canyon or a high-rise hotel or wading waist-deep in a river, the poet, solid and honest, is always aware of his ties to history and its artistic representations. The destination, as well as the difficult means of arrival, is love, no mere word but a pain and sweetness in which loss and celebration converge.