There is something difficult to address in the poems of Robert Simon's new collection, An Ode To Friendship. Perhaps, it is the purity contained in the flagrantly traditional and formal language that wraps itself from cover to cover. Some might find fault with such a jarring approach, given the 21st Century we find ourselves gasping through of late. I am of the other opinion. When reading Simon's work, I become lost in what one must assume to have been a painfully liquid transition, through a seamless and unspecified period of time. These are poems where technique meets soul; where that very same soul is in a constant struggle with its brother, intellect. Robert Simon sneaks up on us with this, and the result becomes a deliciously subtle agony, recognizing how tears and tears can intersect, causing delight in the midst of despair. -Sam Pereira