[close] A ninth volume of poems by one of our most important poets, winner of the National Book Award, the Lenore Marshall Prize, and the Poets' Prize, and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Squares and Courtyards moves with the rhythm of the writer's life, from Paris to New York, between the poles of youth and age, sickness and health, life and death. Sequences celebrate the community of friends, the courage of those living with HIV and cancer. This book is at once elegiac and a song of praise to language's power to remind us that, to take action, it is necessary to take notice. [close]