Philip Schultz has written a strong collection of
poems in Living in the Past. Written in four parts, the narrative voice
remains constant, exploring the lost world of Jewish Rochester New York in the
years following World War II.
Schultz is best at exploring a particular niche of
narrative space and then exploiting it, and he does so for the little Rochester
neighborhood of Cuba Place. He brings in
characters, parades them about, leaves them behind, only to allow them to return
later in the book.
His pursuit of the
ephemeral nature of time, its passing, and the destruction it brings is
relentless. This collection explores an
element of poetry as old as human life: things pass away, and never return
again.
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