Entire dilemma

In his seventh volume of poetry, Entire Dilemma, Michael Burkard considers not only the life he has lived but also the many lives he has not lived, a range of might-have-beens, of alternative lives in parallel universes. Indeed, the "I" of these poems is a symbolic self whose particular experiences will not be mined for pain nor mired in autobiography. Instead, the "I" functions as a kind of radar eye that locates human experience in its particular incidence. Burkard takes seriously Milosz's definition of a poet's central responsibility and, in this new collection, writes "contemplations of Being." Brilliantly inventive in terms of syntax, image, and flexibility of line, Michael Burkard's poems deliver what human communities have always asked of their poets and poems: wonder and song.