Campion, Peter: One Summer Evening at the Falls

University of Chicago Press, paperback

Publication Date: March 2, 2021

Publisher Marketing: The poems in this collection capture the fantastic feeling of falling in love, all while keeping eyes on its life-cycles of crashing aftermaths, lingering regrets, guilt, and renewal. Peter Campion brings us to a series of scenes--on the damp patio, in the darkroom, and along the interstate--where we find familiar characters, lovers, and strangers. In the title poem, he takes us to the falls, where people and passions mix amid the sticky hanging mists:

That charge of summer nights, that edge, like everyone's checking
everyone out. Lingering a moment in the crowd
gathered to watch the rush and crash and let the mist
drift upward to our faces, I'm here: the future feels
open again. Even alone tonight--still: open.

Campion's poems introduce us to a range of people, all of whom are rendered with distinctiveness and intimacy. Their voices proliferate through the collection, with lyric folding into speech, autobiography becoming dramatic monologue, and casual storytelling taking on a ritualistic intensity. The poems in One Summer Evening at the Falls show how each character and each moment can be worthy of love and that this love both undoes us and makes us who we are. In narrative and lyric, in formal verse and free, Campion brings contemporary playfulness together with his classical talent to create this far-reaching and tender collection.