Alan Basting

Home and Away Alan Basting

These are accessible poems, written in plain, direct language reminding us what it is like to be awake in our world, minute by minute; poems delivered with humor and unaffected humility that suggest a steadier, larger happiness than we might know. Basting's voice is simultaneously traveler, bystander, and intruder, a recalcitrant participant-witness admonishing himself for riding the cusp of other's experiences. HOME and AWAY reads as a team of quietly building poems, beginning with what could be, and finally, inviting a layered view of the peopled and natural worlds.