Dais by Francis Klein

Francis Klein finds inspiration everywhere He celebrates the life of a collector of quilts and leaps beyond her achievement:
“I am hung
on the wall of the real, a Maker Unknown’s
temporary anchor.
Klein is always a careful observer- sometimes delighted, sometimes stunned — but late in this collection in a poem titled “Hydrangeas,” as if he can’t, finally resist, he offers wonderful and welcome advice:
Be a seed
Blown away
By the interstellar.
Plant yourself
In the comet’s ice.
My life is richer for my acquaintance with Klein’s imagination and his text. No reader is likely to feel otherwise.

–Bill Littlefield, Host of NPR’s “Only a Game,” and author of several books, including The Circus in the Woods and Take Me Out.

Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]

In his assured new collection that contains both muscle and heart, Francis Klein brings back the dead to dance with the living. Pulsing with immediacy, his persona poems are beautiful and brash declarations that evoke the quality of hymns. In a section featuring dances that range from Hustle to Ballroom Tango, the poet grabs the reader for a “push-pull of lead and follow…” gifting us, in poem after poem, with “the infinitesimal connection held in the drumbeat of the instant.” “Dais” is remarkable!

–Sharon Dennis Wyeth, Cave Canem Poetry Fellow;  Author of “Something Beautiful”

Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]