The Music of Being

While the music of being is often harsh, atonal, dissonant, in this latest collection of poems, Jean Nordhaus finds resonance in the full range of experience, “whether the voices/hold flowers or flames.”  A lifetime of experience is distilled here, the dark with the light. This includes the death of a spouse as well as the chance that “Four Visas” might have made all the difference to the family leaving loved ones behind to board “the final train” and lie among the corpses. 

In this captivating book, Jean Nordhaus dances, sings, grieves, listens and observes with boundless and unique imagination. . . . The heartbreaking title poem about the atrocities of genocide and war is testimony to the human desire for the continuation of life, which is the very music of being."

-Anne Harding Woodworth

This collection offers a long view rendered with elegant restraint, each poem fine-boned, wise, and inclusive—a still point amid the swirl.

-Leslie Ullman