Marston Meadows
Fuller John
Vintage Publishing
In Marston Meadows, John Fuller celebrates the rewards of a life lived in rich attentiveness to the world. The book opens with the extraordinary title sequence, a corona of fifteen intertwining sonnets written for the poet’s wife on their diamond wedding anniversary.
At once magisterial and delicate, they build into a moving meditation on how our selves are shaped, and deepened, by long companionship, under the growing shadow of mortality. Taking in a dizzying sweep of human time, Fuller reflects on what keeps us together and what breaks us apart. With spectacular formal dexterity and a tender awe, the poems track the hidden lives of wildflowers, birds, and other emissaries from an increasingly fragile natural world.