The imaginary baritone

In these poems drawn from a lifetime of experience, Richard Merelman writes of the aspirations and disappointments of his youth--women, ambition, and escape from a difficult childhood; a middle age coming to terms with the horrors of war, Jewish identity in America, and the vicissitudes of love; and the difficulties and accomplishments of old age. He writes in a variety of forms--sonnets, sestinas, rondeaux, free verse, and syllabics--with humor, music, clarity, and irony about his lifelong struggle with himself and an unforgiving God.