Coming to Age

An exquisite anthology of poems about age and aging, to be savored and given to loved ones through the yearsAt eighty-two, the novelist Penelope Lively wrote: "Our experience is one unknown to most of humanity, over time. We are the pioneers." COMING TO AGE is a collection of dispatches from the great poet-pioneers who have been fortunate enough to live into their later years. Those later years can be many things: a time of harvesting, of gathering together the various strands of the past and weaving them into a rich fabric. They can also be a new beginning, an exploration of the unknown. We speak of "growing old." And indeed, as we too often forget, aging is growing, growing into a new stage of life, one that can be a fulfillment of all that has come before. To everything there is a season. Poetry speaks to them all. Just as we read newspapers for news of the world, we read poetry for news of ourselves. Poets, particularly those who have...