Apparitions and Late Fictions

Pile of new books waiting for me, thrust onto the slush at the back porch, the UPS guy's thick boot prints in fresh snow up and down the driveway alarming me when I got home from work -- there've been breakins lately. But in the Amazon box, a store of pleasures. Here from old friend Tom Lynch, continuing his remarkable literary career in his newest, Apparition and Late Fictions:

It was his favorite thing -- to hunt the stealthy, transparent, invisible fish, to know enough about its habits to isolate it in all that dark water, to present a fly or an egg of his own making, the right size and color, at the right angle at the right depth at the right speed to trigger the thing to animal desire, then to fight the thing in its own environs, counting on his knots, his timing, and the proper setting of his drag, then to catch the thing, to hold it, and then to let it go. -- From "Catch and Release"

Thomas Lynch
Oh, yes, you can tell this man started his writing life as a poet. Sheer rhythmic satisfaction, such loveliness and precision.