Aging, death and grief form the backdrop of “Our Last Best Perfect Day” by Barbara Holender, a remarkable collection of lyric poems to which the reader will want to return again and again. In the title poem, Holender describes her grandson’s death--a horrible, untimely event--with grace and compassion seasoned by insight and understanding. In the poem, the vividly drawn grandson seems very much alive as he devours his lunch.

Were you planning on leftovers? you asked

tearing into the devilled eggs, tunafish,

lox and bagels and brownies.

The loss does not disappear right away. After a year, the poet is still talking to her grandson.

So here we are, we two,

you on that side, I on this, with only

the finest thread of separation.

You left before life could do its worst

to you, and I’m here facing it down.

In a way, we’re both winners.

The poet manages to compensate for the terrible emptiness of loss by imagining the grandson is still alive and that his early death may have spared him some of life’s painful trials.

In “Family Movies,” the subject of denial is examined by way of home movies. In these films, those now gone seem to be present, almost, but never quite, prevailing over death.

And what I want to know is

why we can’t find the rewind switch

and tuck in that little flap of film

and get on with all those unfinished scripts.

In other words, is there a way I can use my imagination to help keep them alive a little longer? At the end of the book the reader feels the poet has only an uneasy acceptance of death and loss, and it is this ambivalence that gives these carefully crafted poems a lasting impact.

—linda benninghoff

Barbara Holender will read this Sunday (December 2) at the Burchfield-Penny Art Center as part of the center’s Poets & Writers program. The reading begins at 2pm, with Sam Magavern also reading.