Greg Pape

Beneath the Falls

Arts & Literature

“In the opening poem of Mark Bennion’s new book he imagines his mother the first morning after his birth, ‘you cradle me in the yellow haze / after a fitful night.’ . . . And the poem ends with a powerful recognition that he was not the ‘real star’ of the day, but only part of something much bigger, ‘a constellation I am just now beginning to see.’ This wonderful recognition becomes a guiding principle the reader can see and feel at work throughout the book, although in order to understand the full force of the recognition it is necessary to experience the backstory and the growing pains, to relearn and re-earn such insight. That is what these poems do, they give us the authentic lived details that lead to a true and affirmative vision.”