The man who was marked by winter

In language as brightly and carefully crafted as the sewing the mother aspires to teach her daughter in "The Pattern," Paula Meehan fashions complex images of place and displacement, of joyous moments of discovery trimmed with bitterness, of tragedy inevitable as nightfall, and the repose that accompanies acceptance of loss. A few are hard to read, they are so griefladen; yet they leave us with a sense of release into a deeper understanding of the human heart.

Playful lovers, lovers' cruelties, the divertissements of the sexual revolution - her treatment of these subjects in direct, lighthearted, courageous terms has earned her a vivid reputation as a speaker of truths that all women, and honest men, recognize and respond to.