Title: ON MAPLEWOOD TIME
Author: marc Cohen
Publisher: The Groundwater Press, Hudson, New York

I won't pretend that the trees were rooted in the air, goes a line in Marc Cohen's 12 Ton Bridge. Had he said the trees were rooted in the air, and left it at that, it might be a fragment n one of his more gnomic, almost mosaiclike earlier poems. Here, the implied branches and the roots underground conjure an image of his thoughts, dividing and reaching out into his past. As he drives, what he sees and what he remembers become vivid emblems of a way leading to the heritage/ of a love on the brink of sanity and why truth is so good But its emblems also are the poem: a dune road/ in a village in America and the Ponquogue Bridge sheer as a stocking this morning.

My particular favorite is the title poem, On Maplewood Time. But poems don't need prefaces: poems need to be read. So after some hard thinking, all I have to say about it is, read and enjoy: which is what I want to say about all of these poems, so fresh and new.

James Schuyler