Bravo to Selena Shephard for these unique, sensitive, and brave poems.

Readers who enjoy the idea of mixing poetry and math will love this book. And those who don’t will appreciate it anyway for the way its poems engage—no, positively grapple—with what some call a patriarchal form, and in so doing manage to express the depth and complexity of human yearning, love, and loss.

“Empire” is such a loaded word today that it is hard not to read it with suspicion and irony in any context, but it strikes me that isolationists and fans of strong government could read “Here, Too”as an anthem to empire and its ability to bulwark against disintegrating change.

As our children leave home for college, my husband and I have begun to dream up the journeys we will take together, just the two of us. But as we dream and plan, I am reminded of the simplicity of true romance, the richness and adventure and fullness that is two people in love, exploring.

In writing this poem, I was compelled by the idea that this planet we’re steadily destroying is so magnificent that even its deterioration can look, at times, beautiful.

My husband and I managed many things in our youth, but we did not manage Paris until forty years into our marriage. The poem references our last afternoon in Paris after a splendid two weeks in France.

I have lived in a house, in the middle of six acres of wood, for 45 years. But as my 86th birthday approaches, I am reluctantly thinking of downsizing. Thus the poem.