It is a gift when a poet of the highest order turns his full attention to the oncoming twilight. In Book of Beginnings and Ends, we witness and

partake in what Wallace Stevens called "the intensest rendezvous"─an exquisitely-tuned imagination walking toward death "carrying myself in my

arms as though I were a child." With mastery, humility, and edges of humor, Christopher Howell leads us through memory to mystery. Sometimes

memory is so close it's present tense. And sometimes the present strains to materialize amid signs that "the ultimate erasure, which we have earned,

is upon us." This is a profound and profoundly moving collection by one of our country's essential poets.