crescendo I decrescendo by bo niles

Bo Niles’ third collection of poetry, crescendo|decrescendo, addresses the power and perils of memory and what it is like to slowly lose a vibrant loved one – here, her father – in the context of all he was before. In the first poem, Etude, the father is fourteen with shoulder blades “as tender as the drawn-back wings of a dove” as he plays the piano, “hoping for his father’s sincere regard.” After a lifetime devoted to music, an end-poem, Aria, becomes the benediction the boy wishes for, here bestowed by his daughter, who wants to “inhale/the coda of [his] life.” Poems are, after all, music, and this collection sings the father in full.

–Frances Richey, author, The Warrior