In the first section, “Rowing Toward the Spirit World,” five of the nine poems depict the native people of Alaska and their indigenous Yu’pik folk lore, and its central belief to respect all things in nature “even lice, even stone.” Failure to respect anything of nature will antagonize that thing’s particular creating spirit, and the spirit will create no more. In “On the Death of a Homeless Man,” the folklorist contends that if the walrus spirit is pleased, walruses will come to the hunter “when the hunt begins” so long as the animal is not uselessly slaughtered nor hunted and killed with irreverence.

Section two, “Leaving for a Year,” is the longest section with sixteen poems. Between September 1994 and May 1995, Sexton and his wife Sharyn rented a cottage in Islesboro, Maine. Several poems recall his sojourn there when Sexton was reacquainting himself with his New England heritage and, as he does in “Eastport,” poking fun at L.L. Bean–Maine wannabes—the type who buy used lobster traps to convert into coffee tables. Three poems —“Trolls,” “The Proper Balance,” and “The Flight”— recall Sexton’s youth in Lowell. The passage of time, a recur-ring theme in Sexton’s work, is the focus of “Poem Begun on Mother’s Day” as Sexton reminisces about moving to Alaska in 1968 with his wife “life/is only a worn and folded map.” Some of his graveyard poetry is also in this section. “Neighbor” ends with one of Sexton’s harshest, most cynical lines as he observes a time worn tombstone in an overgrown and neglected burial ground:

A fine white cedar can grow
From the rib cage of a child
And the only love we know
Is that which carves our stone.

Section three “A Letter to Tu Fu” begins with poems inspired by Sexton’s love for Tu Fu (712-770), one of the vagabond poets of the early T’ang dynasty. These are followed by the deeply personal and revealing “Memoir” and “Grandmother Farrell” about his mother and his older sister Rayanne. The poems in the next section, “Transformation,” and those in section five, “Denali,” are miniature verbal sketches of the flora and fauna that flow in and out of Sexton’s isolated retreat in Hurricane, Alaska, where he has a twelve-by-twenty foot, one room, log cabin. Located one hundred and seventy miles north of the hustle and bustle of Anchorage, this is where Sexton and his wife seek refuge and escape from city life, ironically, in America’s last frontier. While there, Sexton assumes the Adamistic role of the poet seeing things, as it were, for the first time, not in the Garden of Eden, but in the pristine Alaskan wilderness. In “Naming” Sexton portrays himself “honeycombed with awe/as Adam must have been standing/ in the Garden, naming, naming, naming.”

But his world is not always awe inspiring. “In Glacial Light” describes the desecration of a bear, a trophy kill:

Three paws are nailed fast
to the siding, the other
paw and head have
come loose. The dangling head
is full of water.

The final section called “For the Sake of the Light,” which is what Sexton originally wanted as the title for
Autumn, reflects on the passage of time, seasonal renewal, approaching old age, and the afterlife. These poems march from dawn to dusk, from spring to winter, and eventually to the spirit world. The last poem in the book is itself entitled “For the Sake of the Light.” Sexton says, “The ‘sake of the light’ is the universe. We are here for the sake of creation and not our own egos. Take ‘light’ as you want, the creator or the created. Either way we are here for more than just to satisfy our own needs.”

After reading Autumn, I told Tom that I wanted to review the book and interview him. He agreed. So, after a lengthy correspondence through email, I sent him a list of questions, and we arranged a taped telephone interview linking Anchorage and Salem. It lasted two hours. No subjects were off limits. We discussed his poetics, the state of poetry today, specific poems and how they evolved, images, symbols, sources of inspiration, and, of course, his family.

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