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SAILING WITH THE WIND

New Poems 2023

Don Gutteridge

Coming soon

Gutteridge’s latest poems range from melancholy to tender, revealing a life lived and loved. The comprehensive collection, which features many of Gutetridge’s loved ones, including family members, close friends, people from his childhood, the lovers who brought delight, beautifully explores the warm memories of childhood and youth along with the aching moments of grief and the persistent longing. In “A WOUNDING IN THE SOUL,” he mourns the lonely death of his beloved grandson: “O Tom! Your lonely going/ has left me with an ache so/ wounding in my soul the gods/ themselves must leave its grieving/ undug.” The essence of Gutteridge’s reflective spirit emanates from imagery that is lyrically simple but deep in meaning. For example, profound emotions permeate the pages of “BRIM:” “If I were to sketch you yet/ again, I’d let my pencil,/ like Leonardo’s lustrous brush,/ limn your loveliness/ in lines of lush allure,/ but even so, it would take/ a fledgling Caravaggio/ or besotted Botticelli/ or hectic Van Eck to capture/ the gamine’s glance you gave me,/ like a gift, each morning,/ to reawaken my world/ and bring it, bubbling, to the brim.” The poems are characterized by a keen understanding of human condition as they explore the joys, happiness, sadness, and despair of all which is life.

A lovely collection of recollections and reflections which is by turns happy and sad, intimate and profound.