There is a Gordian knot that needs to be cut in this intimate collection of confessional poems.
In life, we are often doing one thing but thinking another. Sometimes we are reaching forward, but we turn back. Hughes is able to balance in limbo on the twilight zone bridge of the past and future, questioning, wounded, burning, and healing.
He is both a romantic and cynical witness to feelings of self-doubt and escape, survival, and self-destruction. His ear is solemnly attuned, his tongue erring to the waspish. He takes no prisoners, least of all himself.
Written with the city of Oslo ever-present in the background, one might almost see these writings as intimations or a letter addressed to a long-lost, unrequited lover waiting in the rag and bone shop of a portentous future.