Sunday Afternoons with Tolstoy

by Lynne Burris Butler

"At the heart of this poignant book is grief, is, as Lynne Burris Butler writes, 'the enormity / of what we know too late.' These poems have been distilled in the crucible of hard experience; they sparkle with life's ironies, with the contention between an image of order and a chaotic violence ready to erupt just at the edge of vision."

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Kaye · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sunday Afternoons With Tolstoy is centered around grief, specifically losing a sister to illness, and although I have never gone through that, I find it hard to make it through this book without crying. Specifically the poem Whisper On Me, which is a multi-part poem and does not curb the experience of watching her sister die.

Lynne Burris Butler uses metaphor for comparison in a way that puts you into the feeling of the moment so that you cannot be an outsider looking in. She uses the setting of small-town mid-western America, and the experience of being a teacher and builds you into the heart of the book.