Description: Throughout Capricorn in Flux, Glaser's eleventh book of poetry, we hear that same voice, vivid and precise and crackling with verve and wit. To borrow a line from Robert Lowell, he is still "free-lancing out along the razor's edge." But this time, the sprightliness is shadowed by a darker perspective. Now in his early eighties, Glaser takes into account the diminishments and indignities of late age. Though he calls himself "Laureate of the bent vernacular and the slippery joke," he also cannot help but feel the encroachments of the concluding years: "The nervous pressure of what's next." Harboring what comforts are left--the arts, a new love, the cycle of the seasons--Glaser finds the resilience he needs as everything else fades away, that last flare of grace and energy, ever restless and exuberant: "The mind buried alive in the body."
Review Quotes: I cannot think of another recent book of poems that has the sweep of Elton Glaser's Capricorn in Flux. Spiked with irreverence, filled with loneliness, and wryly lyrical throughout, Glazer's tripartite volume is composed of a love story bookended by youth and age. He writes with remarkable dispassion about love and remorse. It hurts to speak, he writes. His book is constructed from the impressive, vivid energy of poems counting up regrets.--Lynn Emanuel, author of Transcript of the Disappearance, Exact and Diminishing