Robert B. Cumming, the longtime publisher of Iris Press, has been writing poetry for over twenty-five years. collects some of Cumming's sonnets, sestinas, villanelles, and free verse. He uses smooth, surprising language to create pleasing musical effects. Cumming explores the universal themes of memory, aging, mortality, and loss, especially in those poems honoring his late wife, Carmen. Despite his work's elegiac, evocative content, avoids a sentimental approach to these challenging subjects. These poems celebrate life in the face of its impending absence.