argument/ my telephone book or card index . . . .” (A couple of the friends mentioned are “Claiborne,” probably Sybil Claiborne, an antiwar activist and writer, and “Deming,” probably Barbara Deming, a prominent Quaker activist and writer.) She remembers “their seriousness as artists workers/ their excitement as political actors . . . vigiling fasting praying in or out/ of jail . . . .” In the poem’s strong conclusion, which might sum up the book’s theme, she remembers

    their fidelity to the idea thatit is possible with only a little extra anguishto live in this world at an absolute minimumloving brainy sexual energetic redeemed

Most of the poems in the collection apply this upbeat ideal to common experiences such as growing old, often mentioned. The book begins with a barrage of references to old age. “Proverbs” offers the injunction that “a person should be in love most of/ the time this is the last proverb/ and may be learned by all the organs/ capable of bodily response.” “Anti-love Poem” gives the opposite advice: “turn away that’s all you can/ do old as you are to save yourself from love.” “On Occasion” memorializes senior moments: “I forget the names of my friends/ and the names of the flowers in/ my garden.” A later untitled poem describes a whole congregation of debilitated old-timers in a nursing home scene as seen through the perspective of a little girl.

Paley applies her upbeat ideal to growing old by using humor, laughing about her own senior moments and balancing the nursing-home scene with the fresh perspective of the little girl, who finds the Dantesque scene “interesting.” A couple of short untitled poems also mention the freedom to be oneself, uninhibited by rules and conventions, that comes with old age. However ambiguous and lonely, this freedom is in some ways the climax of one’s life. “Windows” is about how, for those who keep their minds and senses active, fresh perceptions are possible even in old age: Paley looks out her window and is excited by the suddenly new way she sees Smarts Mountain across the river. She also reacts in Wordsworthian fashion to a drive through Vermont: “my heart leaps up when I behold/ almost any valley or village in/ the embrace of US eighty-nine/ from White River to Lake Champlain.”

Other poems deal with the experiences of illness and pain that often accompany growing old. One untitled poem recites the litany of ills suffered by Paley and her women friendslungs ruined by a smoking husband, Parkinson’s disease, double pneumonia, the need for walkers, inability to type. Nevertheless, Paley addresses illness and pain with typical humor: “my own/ illness was headlined in the Times for/ some reason I was proud . . . .” She writes about tumors on her spine and head being “extraordinarily competitive,” even though she religiously ate “organic and colorful fruits and/ vegetables” and drank a daily glass of red wine “as suggested by The New York Times.” Paley also notes that “I have experienced the amputation/ of my left breast,” but “still after extreme surgeries/ many of us in the pharmaceutical/ west are able to live well . . . .” She and her surviving “sisters” also find comfort and consolation in each other, which is perhaps how one can understand the “love poem” to her friend Mabel, a “useful person one of the/ five or six in this world,” who has “done more good than any of us do-/ gooders even when impeded by/ George’s brains girls gardens . . . .”

Death is a release from illness and pain, as Paley remembers from her parents and grandmother who “were in great pain at leaving/ and were furiously saying goodbye.” The main complaint Paley has about death is that it takes away family members, friends, and spouses. Otherwise, she is “a little ashamed/ to have written this [untitled] poem full/ of complaints against mortality which/ biological fact I have been constructed for . . . .” The same human biology that results in death also makes new life possiblechildren and grandchildren. This natural paradox is symbolized by dying and decaying trees out of which new growth comes in two poems (“Education” and “This Hill”) at the end of the collection.

Paley sees hope for the future in the newer generations. “Fathers” celebrates the observation that “Fathers are/ more fathering/ these days they have/ accomplished this by/ being more mothering,” which Paley attributes to “women’s lib” and which is “exciting for an old woman.” “Birth of a Child” celebrates the hope that “was always there” in contrast to the cringing world’s need for “creating hope”: “why/ be so grandiose/ just do something/ now and then.” “Detour” celebrates the ability of children and grandchildren to get around the “detritus” and even “heaviest/ sorrows” of the older generation: “luckily their/ children have imperiously/ called offering their lives a/ detour thank god they’ve all/ gotten away.”

A few of the poems comment on the process of creating poetry itself. Writing a poem relieves pressure: “ . . . something/ which has pressed upon my breath beyond bearing/ will appear in words take shape and singing/ let me go on with my life.” “Their Honest Purpose Mocked,” which begins with diaries and notebooks and ends with children whose legs are blown off by land mines, seems to acknowledge that a completed poem exists within and is perhaps modified by the full context of the world it can never capture. Some such realization seems to inform “I Went Out Walking”: “My poems had gotten so heavy/ I went out walking . . . ,” whereupon Paley meets “another poet . . . his backpack/ already fat with poems and/ a pen in his teeth.” In “Night Morning” productivity for Paley does not come so easily: “To translate a poem/ from thinking/ into English/ takes all night/ night nights and days . . . also the newest English/ argues with its old/ singing ancestry . . . .” Similarly, in “The Irish Poet,” a creative writing class breathes “a long communal sigh” at “the early abysmal drafts/ of great poets” while “the Irish poet/ smacks his head and sighs his own sigh . . . .”

It is not surprising that, inspired by such models as Wordsworth and the Quakers, Paley has a plainspoken poetic style. The simplicity of her style, however, is somewhat deceptive: It does not prevent her from expressing some complex concepts, such as the tenuous nature of meaning, or from coining some colorful phrases, such as “the tele-/ phonic electronic digital nowadays,” “the pharmaceutical/ west,” and “curious bombs like bouquets called/ cluster . . . .” A number of poems are built around conceits. Paley’s plain-spoken style is also enriched by her sense of humor, with its reversals, paradoxes, understatements, and self-deprecation: She includes herself among “do-gooders” who have “big mouths” (thereby anticipating and disarming her critics).

In addition to plain style and humor, an outspoken social and political consciousness distinguishes Paley’s poetry. Besides examples of this consciousness already noted, other poems attack the rich, such as “The Hard-Hearted Rich,” “An Occasional Speech at the Interfaith Thanksgiving Gathering,” and “It Doesn’t Matter If.” The collection’s title poem, “Fidelity,” expresses and explains this consciousness: Paley cannot allow herself to get immersed too much in “the dense improbable/ life” of characters in a book because “how could I desert that other whole life/ those others in their city basements . . . .” Paley’s poetry is clearly an extension of her activism.

Other poets, especially young graduates of creative writing programs, who too often write obscurely and have little to say (which might be why they write obscurely), could learn much from Paley’s work. There is nothing wrong with writing poetry clearly, using humor, and expressing a social and political consciousness. If more poets wrote like Paley, perhaps contemporary American poetry would not be such an obscure, minor enterprise.