For Instance (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781951319311)

The poems in For Instance live at the intersection of lyricism and idea, harnessing life's experiences and their attendant emotional weights with wisdom and wit, with music, metaphor, and meaning. In For Instance, she demonstrates her characteristic embrace of paradox and mystery, always observing the various sides and angles of a situation. On the topic of love, a deaf couple "sing with their four hands." As the man "inscribes the air / with urgencies," Espaillat's speaker cannot "even try to look elsewhere." But, later, a mordant Espaillat also notices another couple: a newly engaged woman who, instead of reveling in romantic joy, immediately begins phoning the news to all her friends while her husband-to-be wonders whether he'll marry "mate or mob." Having "quarreled long" with God, Espaillat reviews the pros and cons of the argument, weighing the Rapture and "the flames of Hell" against "Bach's nimble stitching; how light looks / dappled with stained glass; the silent nooks / where scribes grew old retrieving ancient books." On old age and death, Espaillat's words are without equal: From an aggrieved conversation with the mirror: "Do I know you? You're wearing my nightgown . . ."

And while, "old anguish is the worst," Espaillat reminds us that it is love that spins the sun and all the stars. In "Guidelines," she unites these themes in what is a personal vademecum:

Here's what you need to do, since time began:

find something-diamond-rare or carbon-cheap,

it's all the same-and love it all you can . . .

It's going to hurt. That was the risk you ran

with your first breath . . .