The Stone Cicada and Other Poems

by Leonard Wolf

The poems in The Stone Cicada reveal a man constantly engaged in the long pilgrimage to the unknown but hallowed shrine that marks the end of life. Wolf asks the questions and struggles to arrive at the answers that make the "examined life worth living." The poems are about words, about how they tell the truth even as they lie; they are about love, its necessity, its rewards, its betrayals; about the failed hunger for religious faith; about the dark healer, death. What is always clear in these poems is that his mind and heart have been touched by various of the world's folklore; by the wisdom (meaningful but often tragically useless) we acquire by entanglements, as well as sobered by its darker implications. We get to experience Wolf's awe of the process by which feelings, framed by form, become poems. Language about poetry is langauge largely wasted. Read the poems. Hear their music; respond to their themes.

Hardcover

Published May 17, 2001