The supple, intelligent, sophisticated but grounded poems of White Sheets also gave me a good deal of pleasure to read. They cover wide areas of space and time (Brahic grew up in Canada and lives in Paris and California; she weaves webs of cross-connection between such things as her father’s experiences in the Second World War, contemporary fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq and the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta). They sensitively explore the difficulties of physical and emotional distance from parents and the sadness of parents’ decline. Moving easily between personal experience and the imagined experience of others, they … Continue Reading