The Future of Love

John Poch's eighth collection, The Future of Love, is comprised of poems written over the past twenty years, rooted in and inspired by the landscape of Spain, Federico García Lorca's surrealism, and Pablo Neruda's eros. Also present is the influence of the flamenco-the song, the dance, and what Lorca called the duende, a term he used to signify an intense experience of passion, sadness, and ecstasy. The third-largest cathedral in the world and the bullfight arena loom large in these pages, both strange architectures where beauty can only be achieved through suffering and blood sacrifice. The beloved here is a complicated figure: she is muse, lover, mother, housewife, model, queen, dancer, baker, sculptural object, goddess, landscape, and sea. She requires our full attention. These poems honoring a long marriage are not sentimental or nostalgic, but passionate and wild about the beautiful tensions one finds when facing distance, absence, longing, and the struggle of faith. It is a purgatorial journey that, while fraught with gravity, curves toward paradise and rest. The influence of Plath, Lowell, and Merwin are apparent, yet the playful rhythms and sonic qualities of phrasings harken back a little farther to the intensity of Hart Crane and Gerard Manley Hopkins. This poetry takes back from the world what the world would take away.