Love at the End by Wade Stevenson

In the formal immediacy of these new poems, Wade Stevenson practices elegy in the imperative mode, in the faithful idioms of amazement. And so it happens that he is vividly able to address evidence and events of loss in their proper bodies, in a tender, mutual anguish. Along the way, he discovers wild decorums of love in the embrace of annihilation. These poems are a consolation beyond consolation, an unprecedented heaven on earth.

—Donald Revell, author of The Art Of Attention Graywolf Press

“We do our best to avoid the dying of love” from After Midnight comes close to serving as a thesis statement for Wade Stevenson’s poetry book Love at the End. These contemplations of love and loss, the physical world shattering, memories of blood pumping and blood spilt exist with time frozen and companion ghosts fluttering alongside birds in these haunting poemscapes. “My wife, my child, my lover, my mother / Wait for me in a room outside the night” – Love at the End explores the women in the narrator’s life as saviors in a purgatory billowing with dying moons, floating beds, and shadow forests. In these pages you will find boyhood trauma, regrets for paths taken and not taken, the power of birth and motherhood, and the desire to hold onto love as all things end. Even though these themes in poetry are well-traveled ground, is there really anything else that matters but love in the end? Stevenson asks us to face our own answers to this question.

—Martin Ott, author of Underdays, University of Notre Dame Press

Wade Stevenson’s Love at the End dramatizes the beautiful complications of loving and being loved—the romance, ecstasy, taboo, and at times the loneliness of our bonds with those whom we call belovèd. Stevenson’s poems render the “original wound” and “atomic light” of love with linguistic care and spiritual grace. “Even if a real love can never be found,” Stevenson reminds us, “there’s a devotion so deep you could die for.”

—Tony Trigilio, author of Historic Diary, BlazeVOX [books]

In Wade Stevenson’s evocative collection, the self is intimately questioned, responses insisted upon – “How long can you love? / What strange sun can you reach?” We are drawn into the hunt as Stevenson shapes his longing with sharpened echoes of the past, makes attempts at taming his spreading memories. A haunting “basic grammar of a solitude” invades and taints the urge to reconcile acute desire for an other’s love with the pull towards oblivion’s release. We are captured by the precision of language pressing us forward as we navigate this intensely personal landscape.

—Cindy Savett, author of Child In The Road, Parlor Press

Stevenson’s poetry book explores the exquisite pain of love and loss, with turns of phrase that are often so gorgeous one must pause to appreciate them. “accept the monstrous beauty / of just being here”. His writing style is accessible and streamlined and will appeal to many readers regardless of their experience with poetry. He captures both the anguish and joy of all kinds of love.

—Kirkus Reviews

The longing for a perfect love is always present in Stevenson’s work, but more so here. More clearly defined in such a brilliant way. I like these lines a lot “What’s not to love / When the sonatas of childhood / Still stream soaring in your head”. Just as you say in an earlier poem, “we both continue / to seek the impossible, to find / The fine line where the blue air ends.”

—Geoffrey Gatza, author of A Dog Lost in the Brick City of Outlawed Trees, Mute Canary Press

Wade Stevenson was born in New York City in 1945. He has published numerous books, including the memoir "One Time In Paris", a novel "The Electric Affinities", and an award-winning book of poems, "Songs of the Sun Amor". He lives and works in Buffalo, New York.

Book Information:

· Paperback: 70 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-60964-384-3