Alan Michael Parker’s latest collection, The Age of Discovery, is a work of enduring beauty, filled with his signature tenderness and surprise. Parker’s interests range from the Psalms to the Internet, from a woman stepping out her window to die to two men trying to learn how to live as they argue in a rowboat. With an eye on some of the greatest love poets (Amichai, Mistral, Neruda), Parker delivers a collection deep in empathy, rigorously attentive, and formally inventive.

In Parker’s poems, the time of day matters, as we move through dawn, dusk, and deep night. There’s often a knowing moon, an unknowable wisdom, and a relentless curiosity: he’s a poet who delights in imaginative play, too, with an abiding love of song and imagery. But we’re always smack in the 21st century in this new collection, with technology redefining the sublime, and the ever-present threat of loneliness–tempered, these poems suggest, by compassion and humor.