The sonnets represent an edited selection from more than seventy entries, each held (loosely) within the sonnet form, just as the paintings, sketched in Europe and completed later in the United States, each in a square format, represent a selection from the many works the artist has done based on the towns of the Drome area of Provence.

The poems recount the shocks of travel, things seen and reflected upon, people encountered, homesickness, and, finally, a week's touring with the "next generation"--the Feldmans' daughter and her husband.  Round Trip is meant to suggest not only the outward and inward motion of travel, but also the sense of generational repetition and return.

Click here for sample of the sonnets.

". . . a book of love, for Europe, for the natural world, for children, for old places, for friends, and for each other.  Also for the sonnet and for the history of landscape painting.  What am I leaving out?   The sonnets are moving both in the kind of gratitude they express for how much the speaker has, in itself a fresh theme, and in their awareness of fragility, which is built into the theme of travel."

Carl Dennis, author of Practical Gods, 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry