Without a Philosophy: Poems - Hardcover

Elizabeth Seydel Morgan's Without a Philosophy explores the times when a clear solution does not exist, when we find ourselves in "those darknesses between," where life appears nothing like certainty. In poems about the illness and death of a beloved man, the speaker asks the "unanswered questions" which are inevitably raised by the experience of grief, about the "impossibility of gauging distances" between souls. We see a life without pure knowledge of the truth as "we're either learning more each day / Or slantedly misled." Yet, there is affirmation here of a life of the imagination and a life of love.

Through the slanted louvers, light cracks the shadowed room; October Sunday afternoon asserts its life. Slats of brightness on your blanket insist the sky outside is cold blue But who am I to feel so stuck inside, for we both know the truth that when we were young I spent so many golden Sunday afternoons in shuttered rooms. Crack a cold beer and oh how we loved shutting out the sun, some football game droing its thudding plays beneath our breathing.

"Shutters" published in Without a Philosophy by Elizabeth Seydel Morgan. Copyright © 2007 by Elizabeth Seydel Morgan. All rights reserved.