The Speaker (Narrator)

Several of the poems in the collection seem to follow the life journey of a single character, one who first appears as a youth (in “Faithful and Virtuous Night”), moves through young adulthood (“The Sword in the Stone”), into mature adulthood (“The White Series”), and finally into a period of being an elder, close to death (“Approach of the Horizon”). It is important to note that this time-defined journey does not necessarily unfold in a linear fashion as suggested above: “…Horizon,” for example, appears in the collection before “…Series.” Instead, the experiences of this central character are portrayed in a kind of collage, with meaning emerging as much through juxtaposition as through progression.

It is also important to note a strong sense that, as a function of the collection’s thematic intent to portray the journey of life towards death as a universal experience, several central...