Seizing the Sun and Moon

The third volume of THE SEASONS OF YOUTH celebrates the author's growing family, with the birth of a son. Father and mother revisit the daily joys and challenges of seeing a child flourish from infancy into the preschool years, while they marvel at their daughter's rapid physical and social development, as she progresses from age three to six and a half, exhibiting the first hints of who she'll be as an adult. In thirty-nine poems that poignantly dramatize the interweaving of four lives, Louis Daniel Brodsky shares myriad rituals of childrearing (bathing, meal time, school days, pets, playing, first words, getting ready for bed), all of which offer chances to experience the coming-of-age wonders of early maturation and the rites of initiation into love's simple complexities—opportunities to seize the sun and moon.