Richard Beban's poems in What the Heart Weighs touch a wide range of subjects--family memories, lovers past and present, travel and experiences in other countries, and even a supermarket cart, a fruitfly, the beautiful body of a dead seal, even a lady who is carried into the sky by the pigeons she feeds. Beban's energetic voice can be just as varied, witty, provocative, casual, serious, nostalgic. Two remarkable sections are my favorites--the title section, What the Heart Weighs, and the engaging poems in Talking to Birds. Many fine poems in this book have called me back for a second reading, a third, a fourth.

Beban's distinguished poems throb with energy and irony. He loves to communicate with birds, and I'm sure they enjoy his poems, so close they are to bird-speech, lyrical and musical.

Richard Beban is a nostalgic vagabond of history, literature and family. He may be gazing through a Paris drizzle at the sluggish Seine, lost in the catacombs or in an Egyptian tomb, in his grandmother's back yard, or dancing with Li Po in the shadow of a shadow of drowning with the moon in his arms. The word is concise, the emotion tense and transparent. A fresh eye to his comos, well tamed, his interior vision and pen are a lovely gift to the reader.