Between parentheses and other poems

This collection of poems contains thirty-nine pieces. The subject matter of the poems is the body of experience, sensuous and otherwise, that an observant person in a modest Southern community with access to the ocean might gather without much difficulty. There are reflections, too, about topics familiar to twentieth-century youth: student life, the Berkeley rebellion, the puzzle of back-spinning wheels on a movie screen, the assassination of President Kennedy, Malcolm X, and so on. The forms used in these poems are employed mainly to keep the observations under control and prevent their fading. Occasionally there is a conscious attempt to suggest a style—as in the imitation of Cummings—but mainly the form is functional, and devices are kept to a minimum lest they call attention to themselves. The framework of the whole is suggested by the concluding poem, which gives the title to the collection, "Between Parentheses." The first poem suggests a comparison between the poet and the collector of butterflies. The last one suggests the way that poems may be "pinned" for permanent exhibit—that is, by keeping them rigid between parentheses or other suitable marks of punctuation