Bagful of Bags

We rarely see poetry like this any more: gritty, direct, burdened by what's genuine, what's human, what counts. Paul Scollan's Bagful of Bags jumps from our troubling war in Vietnam to a troubled city in Connecticut, and along the way extols the extraordinariness of ordinary lives in which love can be a Ferris wheel and falling "just a fast way of moving." It all ends with a declaration of self and a boldly simple statement of going forward: "I do exist. I know I do."