The Auroras

David St. John's new collection of poetry, THE AURORAS, is the most provocative, adventurous, and stylistically eclectic work of his career. Composed as a triptych of three distinct movements, THE AURORAS opens with a sequence of sensually charged poems, urgent, subversive, crackling with desire. In the poems of the center section, St. John returns to the California landscapes of his youth and young adulthood, both in the San Joaquin Valley and the Sierra Nevada mountains. These poems are quiet and measured, yet often psychologically troubling. The final section of THE AURORAS is constructed as an album of philosophical and aesthetic meditations, all haunted by the force of an emerging sense of mortality. In this collection, even the most compelling emanations of light--artistic, intellectual, sexual, or spiritual--are inevitably framed by the impending darkness. The beauty, music, and artistry of David St. John's poetry have been long admired; now, THE AURORAS reveals the extent and breadth of this masterful poetic achievement.