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What constitutes a love poem? What makes a good marriage? How can one explain fifty years of amiable, loving, committed companionship that carries no caveats and no regrets? How can one enumerate, let alone explain, the legion shapes and shades and manifestations by which love reveals itself?
These poems in An Angel of the First Degree are all, significantly, love poems. Many of the poems are incidental in that they were written in the busyness of life, the way many things appear in the busyness of life. Some began as a way to describe the joys of everyday togetherness. Some of the poems are humble; such are the Valentine's Day poems. Some of the poems, the wedding poems, are grand, written in celebration and commemoration. These poems would not express honest aspirations for marriage had they not been grounded in my own experience, in my own marriage to the woman who is the subject, object, and primary reader of these poems. Thus, all these poems must be read as love poems for my lifelong friend and companion, mother of my children, my guardian angel, love of my life.
James A. Zoller is Professor Emeritus of Writing and Literature at Houghton College in western New York. He is the author of three previous collections, including Simple Clutter; Living on the Flood-Plain; and Ash & Embers.
“These love poems from a husband to and about his wife are centered in a combination of ordinary and everyday things and experiences, and their lives and marriage as testimonies to God’s grace. . . . They are a moving testimony to a life partner without whom, as Zoller says, ‘I travel badly alone.’ His is an excellent free verse written with a measured precision and finely tuned ear, a pleasure to read.”
—David Black, poet and wedding officiant
“In these wise, radiant poems James Zoller proves his delight in the joys and challenges of love and language (the two are one). These poems like marriage are acts of consummate imagination revealing themselves not chronologically but in layers of complexity in which all time is one grace-filled moment. Beginnings withhold themselves only to be realized in the silences of endings. Endings are realized in the wordless wonder of beginnings. Every line rings true.”
—John Leax, author of Recluse Freedom and Remembering Jesus
“While maintaining intimacy between poet, subject, and reader, An Angel of the First Degree offers a fresh look at romantic love. With the pulse of organic rhythm Zoller’s decorous forms inhabit the theme in ‘innerworldly rhyme.’”
—James Wardwell, Professor Emeritus of Literature, Houghton College