[NOTE: If you don’t see the “Purchase” button, please hover your cursor below the price and the “Purchase” button will show up for you to click on. Sorry for the inconvenience.]

The 76 poems in A New Life by Ralph Dranow offer us a unique and compassionate view of what it is to be human. People on the fringe of society reveal their humanity and touch the poet’s heart, as do ordinary people doing seemingly ordinary things, whose goodness could easily be overlooked except for the poet’s discerning glance. A father spending hours looking for his young daughter’s toy in “Professor of Patience” achieves a modest nobility, as does the family sloppily but joyfully playing Frisbee in the park in “Happiness.” In this collection of poems, the old life becomes the new life through the poet’s discovery of the mystery and wonder that lie just beneath the surface of our everyday lives.