The Middle Ages by Raymond Berthelot

Though this is Ray Berthelot’s first book, it does not read that way. He has a practiced hand. Berthelot works the same way that Miles Davis shaped his solos to let the bare bones of song lines emerge. He knows what to put in and what to leave out, how to let the poem tell its own story. In The Middle Ages Ray Berthelot shows measures of verve, clarity and grace that not all writers ever learn to give the reader.

–Ed Ruzicka, author of My Life in Cars and Engines of Belief

The Middle Ages is, put frankly, good poetry from Mr. Berthelot. The poems are very deep and move along loving lines.  This is sincere, clean and conscious poetry, sometimes humble and innocent, but always honest and warm, supportive and forceful.

–Marco Tulio del Arca, Honduran poet and author of On the Walls of a Dream and Under the Sun of All