These delicately crafted verses reveal a romantic, gentle, intensely emotional writer who is able to fashion many worlds within the three-line form he has mastered. In his highly personal book, David Latner gives us an insight into his inner life and his reactions to the world of nature, both of which he sees as alternately cruel, ironic, or beautiful. He experiments with several variants of the seventeen-syllable haiku form to develop a distinctive poetic voice. He shows us his delight in the wild life of his pond, the beauty of the woods and flower gardens, the wild expanse of the sea, and the harsh landscapes of the desert.

There is a dark side to his verse, born of the sorrow and pain he suffered with the death of his first child in infancy, and later, the deaths, little more than a year apart, of his first wife and his nineteen-year-old daughter. His writing is often colored by despair, by a wrenching sense of irony, and a mordant wit. The contrast with his thoughts on love is striking.

At an age when most men retire even from playing golf and tennis, David Latner embarked upon the writing life he had felt constrained to give up years before, when the demands of family life and a deep grief all but overwhelmed him. He spent many years in the business world, but resumed playwriting, his first love, after he retired. He had several workshop productions of his plays, and then turned to an intensely personal form of poetry.

He has always been a New York City person, born there and living the first half of his adult life in Manhattan. Rarely had he held a manner or screwdriver in his hand. Yet, over the years he lived in "a little house in the big woods" in Becket, Massachusetts, he became adept at many country dweller skills: "woodin" with a chain saw, house painting, and mowing. The birds, flowers, and trees, and the change of seasons were an inspiration to him, as were his travels to the sea and the desert. His verse reveals his deeply felt insight into life and love.