A Fine Dusting of Brightness
Brooks, Dorothy Howe
The title of this collection, A Fine Dusting of Brightness, also opens an extraordinary poem of literary description and exposition focused on Vermeer's painting The Cook. These poems embody ekphrasis even when the subject of the poem is not a visual work of art. Many of the poems consider loss--the failings of age or sickness--and death, yet vivid observations become surprisingly juxtaposed images and skillful irony. For example, in "Final Gi...