Double Life: Poems

Daniel Tobin's new collection, Double Life, takes its name from a vision of humanity at once passionately earthbound and spurred by the metaphysical. These poems range from haunting meditations on the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch to an astonishing polyphonic sequence based on the life of Father Bartolome de Las Casas, who died in 1566 and wrote the first bill of rights in the New World. Between these two longer orchestrations appear works both musically diverse and startling in their formal virtuosity, as attuned to Plato, the Bible, Dante, Shakespeare, Keats, and the natural world as to TV talk shows, the news, physics, movies, and fast-food restaurants.