Moving between narrative and reflection, and reveling in the genre of the long poem, Robert Kaplan uses detailed imagery to invite the reader into a slice of 1980s New York City: the urban landscape, the national politics, gay exuberance and loss, and, weaving throughout, the shadow of the AIDS epid...

Moving between narrative and reflection, and reveling in the genre of the long poem, Robert Kaplan uses detailed imagery to invite the reader into a slice of 1980s New York City: the urban landscape, the national politics, gay exuberance and loss, and, weaving throughout, the shadow of the AIDS epidemic. The title poem, "Past/Present," which is the first half of the book, sprawls through layers of time, failed romance, geographic movement, and growing self-awareness as the narrator sheds multiple selves to find his core. The poems in the second half of the book (re)create a sensory and personal landscape which becomes a metaphorical and meditative platform upon which to address questions of memory, identity, relationships, and how to navigate through an increasingly unstable world.