The 145 short poems in this volume deal with certain problems concerning human relationships that seem particularly frequent in the western industrialized world at the present time. The volume starts with a collection of 117 poems entitled SURFACE TENSION. Monologues in which the author relates his inner states of emotion to events in Nature are alternated with shorter and more lyrical poems. In the first 'movement' the sea is used to symbolize conflicts between men and women in a partnership. In the second movement, the earth is used to symbolize conflicts within an individual over how far he or she should allow intellectual concerns to win out over romantic concerns (or vice versa). In the third movement, air and sky are used to symbolize the states of relative peace (interspersed with moments of storm) that can arise in a relationship between two people with similar ideals. In the second collection, entitled MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, the unifying undercurrent is the poet's interest in how his own romantic conflicts influence the style and form of the individual poems associated with those conflicts.

Explore the feelings of a man who is like many others: He feels guilty about being attracted to someone other than his wife. It's during these moments that he clamps down on his desires, knowing that it could endanger his marriage and family life. But still, his responsibilities as a parent have him wishing he could escape into the arms of another. Find out how he battles through his urges in this book's first selection of poems, titled "Trepidations." With moving candor, he delves into his moments of mental infidelity to his wife. The poet follows that up with "Celebrations," a second grouping of poems in which he expresses his appreciation to his loving wife. Using a stylistic approach dubbed "cosmopolitan formalism," these poems are meant to appeal to all people, regardless of their gender, sexuality or background. Weed through the tricky problems of a serious relationship and find a love that lasts in Celebrations and Other Poems.

Black Hole and Other Poems, a new compilation of verse by poet David Murray, focuses on the role played by hunger for power in reducing the success of heterosexual romantic relationships. Divided into four parts, this collection explores the topic in a wide variety of styles and approaches. The first part of the collection, Poems in a Lighter Vein, interprets the familiar vampire story as being an allegory of common male fantasies of having power over many brides, and most of its verses are satirical in nature. The second part, Black Hole, contains examples based upon Murrays experiences of the personal power, all too easily abused, exerted by men over women. Treading Water, the third part, describes Murrays feelings when he found himself forced to compete with a male rival to see which of the two could exert the most power over a particular females affections. In the fourth and final part, Bagatelles, each poem attempts to arouse, in only two lines, core emotional responses of the kind that are usually assumed to require longer poems. Satirical, gutsy and succinct by turns, this book explores the role of power in sexual relationships and the varying aspects of that power.

In recent years, poet David J. Murray formed an unusual connection with a friend, a widow as he is a widower. They began a collaboration in verse, creating collections of poetry together that form a unique and intriguing conversation. Interchange and Other Poems, Murray’s 13th poetry collection and the 3rd in this series, weaves together many different components of life using the thread of interchanging communication to enrich and maintain a mutually acceptable relationship. Language and content combine beautifully as Murray blends concrete detail with abstraction. His mellifluous marriage of the tangible and the universal shows that stable relationships beneath the human experience when well maintained. These verses moves smoothly from one aspect of life to another, from one poem to the next, carried along by the constant undercurrent of the relationship’s recurring repair and renewal.

In the summer and early fall of 2015, the warmest September ever recorded in Toronto, a widow and a widower made an unusual connection. Following their meeting for the first time as single people, the pair began visiting each other, either at his place in Toronto or at her place in the Quebec countryside. They also travelled as sightseers to Montreal and to Kingston and attended a wedding at a vacation resort. Summer in September and Other Poems emerged from that connection, a collection of poetry written from the widower to his friend and including several poems written by her in response. Featuring ten topical sections, these verses recall the poets deceased spouses, consider their various travels both together and separately and explore ideas of romance, nature, old age, praise and sleep. Short and compelling, the poems of this collection offer an intriguing view of romance following grief. Surfacing Socializing here, alone, was fun, But Ive been impatient to have it over and done And let my undermind, obsessed with you, Surface at last, lucid, untrammeled and true, Until it vies with the hillscape I see here In producing sonic colours, pure and clear.

An Apology For all the irritations Ive caused you, Im sorry; in a mirror, My eyes might glisten with tears of fear and remorse. For being an onerous burden upon you, Im sorry; in a drama, Id movingly exit, the back of my hand on my brow ... It is no secret that unrequited love is the most difficult kind of love there is in life. In An Apology and Other Poems, seasoned poet David J. Murray extends a lyrical apology to the heroine who inspired his writing of four previous compilations and may not have welcomed the attention. In his tenth volume of poems, Murray covers a wide variety of themes that reflect on both the personal and abstract as he explores feelings of humiliation, fear and hope as well as the issues associated with aging, inequality and moral scruples. Throughout his compilation, Murray shares poetry composed in a variety of styles that use both traditional metrical schemes and free verse to convey his thoughts and feelings about life, love and the future. An Apology and Other Poems shares one mans journey as he reflects on unanswered love, expresses remorse for his actions and hopes for forgiveness.

Inside a Toronto apartment with a view of Lake Ontario and a hillside covered with trees, seasoned poet David Murray penned his tenth collection of lyrical versesomehow meeting a lofty goal of writing one hundred poems in thirty days. While waiting for a rendezvous at a train station with a recently widowed friend, Murray passed the time during the longest month of his life by fueling his creativity and writing mostly sonnets that cover a variety of subjects and emotions. Murrays poems not only explore feelings of anticipation, grief and hope but also the unpredictable beauty of nature as spring attempts to make an entrance, the questions that arise while gazing at old photographs and the unforeseen as distant lovers wait for an event. The Longest Month and Other Poems share a seasoned poets reflections as he contemplates the past, present and the possibilities of a new beginning.

In A Bell Curve and Other Poems, poet David J. Murray divides 118 short poems into seven separate sections; each section holds a common theme but includes a different number of poems from the other sections. The poems of this collection offer photographs of moments in his mental life, while the collection as a whole uses the bell-curve concept to allow him to stress the unified nature of this poetry collection. The first section, only three poems long, is about children. The second section, nine poems long, is about the authors professional interests in psychology and philosophy. The third, including seventeen poems, is about the arts, especially literature. The fourth sectionthe middleincludes fifty-eight poems addressed to the person who is the heroine of Murrays previous book, An Artists Model and Other Poems (2012). Sixteen poems comprise the fifth section on women Murray has met in the past and whose influence on him led him to write about those encounters. The sixth section contains twelve poems about the changing views of Lake Ontario as he sees it every day. The final section includes just three memorial poems, two of which concern his deceased wifes gravesite in Kingstons Cataraqui Cemetery. These numbers3, 9, 17, 58, 16, 12, 3resemble, in outline, a sharply peaked bell curve, illustrating roughly how much time Murray spends thinking about each topic at the present stage of his poetic experience. This form offers exploration and a snapshot of his current thoughts on a wide range of subjects.

Written with language that works in harmony with the rhythm of the poems, seasoned poet David J. Murray offers his third collection of work in War-Wise and Other Poems. Presented in two parts, the first set, War-Wise, contains thirty-five poems reflecting Murrays memories of life in Manchester, England, during World War IIa war that began when he was two years old. Emitting clear and powerful imagery, some of the titles are straightforward narrative. Others are more reflective and address the effect the Holocaust had on his eight-year-old mind. In Ghosts, Murray combines the innocence of childhood with the violence of war. In Sunday School, we sometimes drew Pictures whose innocence shone through The spattered lines of gunshot fire That dotted and dashed each page entire Until, on the page, a Messerschmidt Was finally and firmly hit And fell in flames into the blue Of our crayond sea; we drew no crew. The second collection, One Hundred Mood Studies, contains a set of short, stand-alone, rhymed sonnets, each expressing a modern-day emotional conflict. Exercises in the craft of formal writing, these poems provide an outlet for everyday shifts in emotions.

Taking Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, and Gerard Manley Hopkins as its primary subjects, Surface Tension reveals how these later Victorian poets repeatedly imagine the aesthetic moment—charged, variegated, intensely focused—as capable of birthing a new, and newly redemptive, culture. Turning to contemporary experimental poets and theorists of poetry, such as Andrew Joron, Lisa Robertson, Christopher Nealon, and Joan Retallack, it goes on to reveal how our own poetry's fascination with complex surfaces and imagined social transformation has deep and under-recognized ties to Victorian concepts. Surface Tension offers new insights into the debt we owe to the most radical of the Victorians while yielding new understandings of how late Victorian poetry, even when least explicitly political, engages, and often re-envisions, the period's pressing anxieties about social progress, decadence, and revolution.