These poems of Sam's are good, not only because of their specific attention to lives that feel real and valuable, but becuase they're like all Sam's poems: authentic. They come out of genuine feeling, not feeling that "should" be expressed because it's "right" for the occasion or the subject. His autobiographical poems have the same kind of authenticity, including the so-called "light" ones, which are not so much light as possessed of a different kind of gravity.
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