Dancing at Lake Montebello begins at the dawn of the civil rights era, calling up memories of life in Baltimore, the most segregated U.S. Northern city, and moves through the poet’s coming of age in the turbulent ‘60s and ‘70s. The book’s final section, “More Dangerous for All of Us,” melds the personal and the political—illness, death, loss and grieving, as seen through the eyes of one moving through middle age—and acknowledges the solace that nature and spiritual reflection provide. Mixing...
