Before The Yes

Robert Graham’s new collection of poems Before The Yes invites a reader to take a closer look at many of the too-often unremarked yet significant features of everyday life and experience. To accomplish this, in each of its four major sections Graham deploys a diverse array of forms and styles as well as a cast of engaging individual voices and personas. Graham’s poems can range from the loss of a loved one to the multiple challenges of aging; from celebrating new connections to nature and the landscape to the emotional ups and downs of past and present personal and social relationships. Throughout, Graham’s poetic sensibility is above all clear-eyed and tinged with wry humour. Before The Yes never minimizes life’s moral complexity and remains alert to the human capacity for wonder, for resilience, and for ‘going beyond.’