In This Maybe Best of All Possible Worlds

Winner of the 2016 FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize. In his fifth poetry collection, William Page explores humankind's complex relationships with the world's inhabitants. We encounter teens feeling the illusion of immortality, a French prostitute slipping into heaven, a spire-building beetle, the relentless cacophony of a katydid. Subjects range from the mighty bull and lion to the flight of the swift, from the sleeping fly to the postman's angry daughters, from the envisioned celestial flight of the dead to the actual flight of the living. Page sees heroism in the relationship of spouses, of parents and offspring; in the warmth and ferocity of friendship, the simple life of a farmer, and the courage and generosity of an innocent girl dying of AIDS. Humanity and machinery stand together in awesome contrast and similarity. At times meditative, surreal, dramatic, philosophical, witty and humorous, these poems unite truth and fiction. The dead come to life again, and the lost are found.