"It's such a delight when something catches you by surprise and makes you read on-and on. So it is with Waldor, a superb lyric, gnomic and Gnostic poet."-Gerald Stern Peter Waldor's spare irony-sometimes tender, sometimes bawdy-deals in dichotomies: love and hate, frailty and strength, fear and faith. These elliptical and colloquial lyrics draw equally from parable, prayer, and elegy. Hesitating on the threshold between isolation and community, the poet focuses a distortingly accurate microscope on what matters in our lives. "Lips" My love, our lips are four knives asleep in the drawer. Last four left. The rest out for the usual butchery. The craftsmen- the woodworker, silversmith, gone for good, even the glassblower who puffed the knob that has gone unheld all evening is gone. Peter Waldor's poems have been published or are forthcoming in many magazines, including The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and The Iowa Review. Waldor lives with his wife and three children in northern New Jersey, where he works in the insurance business.