Spinach Days

I recognized the title of this book when I saw it recently on the shelves of a second-hand bookshop: Spinach Days, by Robert Phillips, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore (2000). A few of the poems in this volume have made their way to Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac, and I remembered liking them. So I pulled it from the shelf and had a look. A nice surprise--it was signed by Phillips. For six bucks, and it being a first printing, I decided to buy it. There is some fine writing here with memorable lines (including such intriguing titles as John Dillinger's Dick and The Man Who Fell in Love with his Cat), but the following lines from Houston Haiku provided me with the sharpest (pardon the pun) imagery in the entire volume:


Trying to love her
is just like licking honey
from the razor's edge.