Undress, She Said. By Doug Anderson. New York:  Four Way Books, 2022,  116 pp., $17.99 paperback.

As much as the title suggests otherwise, Doug Anderson's Undress, She Said is a collection of poems about the experience of dying, although it also has much to do with love and intimacy. Dying naturally refers to a span of time that precedes actual death, extending, if circumstances allow, over a protracted period. In a psychological sense, dying begins with a person's first acknowledgment of approaching death. For Anderson, a contemporary American poet, dying is operationally an unfolding and reorganization of images and memories from different epochs of one's life: “What you have is the longer death,/the dying, the composting of the soul.”

If for some it can feel unhurried, dying does not lack for intensity. For that reason the memories recounted by the poet appear to have been chosen for their emotional force. In this spirit, as a dedication, Anderson offers the following thought from a fellow poet, C. D. Wright: “Poetry is the language of intensity. Because we are going to die, an expression of intensity is justified.” Lest this opening salvo prove insufficient as a warning of the affective magnitude of what is to follow, the opening poem, titled, “Prophesy,” should alert the reader:

Undress, She Said has four interconnected sections, each of which presents a different aspect of old age and dying that evokes a memory from the 78-year-old poet's life.

The first section, “Love in Plague Time,” depicts the consciousness of one's nearness to death as a distressing milestone, a universally experienced plague. One of the most widely shared perceptions of “plague

time” is how “loneliness locks the door.” For all of its mutual features, dying remains an individual and therefore lonely progression. In Undress, She Said, the poet's antidote would undoubtedly be love. But how might love counter the loneliness and “sting” of dying?

The craving for love, for human connection in all i