Poems and Notes is a short volume composed over many years, charting the emotional and intellectual evolution of the author through the most significant events of his life. His preface is a biography in brief and introduces the poetry of his maturity. There follows what remains of his apprentice work, to demonstrate the origins of his passions and preoccupations. The Notes conclude the volume, providing a background and commentary to his life, at the end of which the author finds a conclusion both to the work and to his own writing.
Poems and Notes is concerned above all with understanding and making sense of the author's experience, of reconciling circumstance and creating, if possible, something memorable and beautiful from even his most difficult times.
Cover: Detail from After the Storm, c.1700, Willem van de Velde the Younger and Studio. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.
