David Sloan

The Irresistible In-Between David Sloan

Poetry. The task David Sloan takes on in this collection is nothing less than to depict the struggle to live an authentic life as a necessarily flawed human being. While envying and celebrating 'the casual exactitude of lines/ measured out like music' by carpenters working in his attic, or his own teenage son's unselfconsciousness, Sloan does not shy away from exposing what he calls 'all my ineptitudes' as a son, brother, father, and husband. But this uneasy awareness of the dread mingled with elation only deepens his appreciation of those human ties--and of the world around him, whose beauty remains (as in the title of one of my favorite poems) 'unfixable.'--Jeffrey Harrison