Drawing from a career of almost fifty years, Daniel Mark Epstein’s collection of new and selected poems forms a lyrical autobiography of its author as a poet and a man. Dawn to Twilight examines universal themes such as love and aging, happiness and despair, each of which Epstein approaches differently throughout the decades of his writing career. These poems encapsulate the evolution of Epstein’s work, with the passage of time itself forming a crucial theme as the author grows from student to lover to father.
Epstein’s poems evince his deep empathy for people from all walks of life: a knife salesman who harbors no illusions about the use to which his wares have been put; a teacher who watches his student struggle with a thorny philosophical question; a genie whose plans of revenge fade as he emerges from his lamp into the light. Dawn to Twilight celebrates the coming of joy and beauty, accepts their transience, and elegizes their passing.
Daniel Mark Epstein is the author of eight prize-winning books of poetry and six highly acclaimed biographies, including The Ballad of Bob Dylan. His honors include the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
Praise for Dawn to Twilight
“Epstein is, centrally, a love poet, and a splendid one, an advent most welcome on the landscape of [contemporary] literature.”—The New Republic
“Not once is a poem stuffy or obscure. Each is graceful and sympathetic, many are profound, [and] all are fit to be appreciated again and again.”—Booklist
“In the fine contemporary writing that celebrates the natural world, nothing is more powerful than this.”—National Review
