Winner of the inaugural Small Press Award for Poetry in 1997 for his much acclaimed work, Crazy Horse in Stillness, William Heyen shares with us the result of a lifetime of interest in the royal family and Britain. In these poems, the humanity of each character becomes apparent: a young Elizabeth contemplates love while crying into a cloth woven by Gandhi, a gallant Charles courts a wide-eyed Di with anecdotes of his travels; and gradually, we see the marriage of Charles and Diana crumbling in its later years: PartyThe rock he held in his hand had cooledin the nameless Kalahari one thousandmillion years before. He pressed itinto his palm as hard as he could....Sounds of London rose into his reverie.A hundred feet away, Diana was dressingin another of her stunning colors. The Kalahariin his palm ached, and London was raining.The DiverActing out her playbook on flirtation, Diana hovered: then certainhe was watching, stretchedand stroked herself, then dove....Charles imbibed champagneand turned to others. He and the Britanniafulfilled their social obligations whilethe budding girl beguiled his bubbles.William Heyen completed this cycle of poems before Diana's death. Interested in the royal family since boyhood, and in England for the Oxford Poetry Festival in 1981 (just before Charles and Diana were married) Heyen says it was then "my memories, desires, questions of monarchy and love, stories of palaces and jewels were fusing for me in ways that would become poetry".