Poet's Choice

Needing that frame to be heroic.

These two cups, chipped cold pleasures

Of the mouth, fill, are emptied, filled,

That after dinner two boys may stare

Out a window at stars lighting up,

Filling the heavens' faces, where

Each of them wanders in his solitude.

The first sorrow comes from the first hope.

There's a winning candor to Orlen's approach to this material, a shrewd understatement of imagination. The humble, unimpressive chipped cups, the ordinary domestic pleasures and miseries, gain the dignity of their plainness. There are no melodramatic claims or dire implications to this "one long drama." The homely, unvarnished quality in image and language -- "angry," "happy," "emptied," "filled" -- is reflected in the direct, generalizing formula of the last line. Defying the writing workshop rule that forbids a summarizing moral conclusion, Orlen makes his reflection feel genuine: that hope and sorrow have a single origin, dramatized by empty cups overflowing with memory.

(Steve Orlen's poem "Family Cups" is from his book "The Elephant's Child: New & Selected Poems, 1978-2005." Ausable.

Copyright 2006 by Steve Orlen.)

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Robert Pinsky's most recent book is " The Life of David."