Livre - Good turns

Dan Mager's poems have appeared since 1960. Besides journal and magazine publications, his books include "To Track The Wounded One: A Journal" (Ridgeway press, 1988), "Glosses: Twenty-four Preludes ans Etudes" (St.Andrews Presbyterian College Press, 1995), "Borderings "(First winner of the Union County Writers Chapbook Contest, 1998), and "That Which Is Owed To Death" (Main street Rag Press, 1998). He has published translations of Rilke and Akhmatova, and of the Czech poets: Nezval, Hrubin, Halas, Holub and Seifert. He has collaborated with the composer Marc Satterwhite on two cycles of songs ("Suffer Even The Least" and "Passage Work", performances of which have taken place from Atlanta to Omaha and London to South Africa) and the opera, Akhmatova. He teaches at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, NC. A "good turn" is a turn at a game like scrabble or chess played with finesse. A "good turn" is a veering in the course of a life or a poem that leads to something unforeseen and good. A "good turn" is a worthy deed. One deserves another. A "good turn" is to make a turn - a choice - and have it turn out well. "Good turns" is four cycles of poems plus two sequences, one the book's mid-point, the other its coda. The cycles are interlaced so that the book invites readingg in various ways. On can hopscotch through and around in it. One can happen upon surprised veerings. One can perform upon it worthy deads, or happen upon them. One can make choices that turn out well.