The Passing Throng

Edgar A. Guest wrote poetry for people who had never thought of themselves as poetry readers, and that generous simplicity is precisely what makes "The Passing Throng" endure. These are not verses that demand a scholarly background to appreciate; they are quiet, honest observations about what it means to move through a life. Guest captures the weight of ordinary mornings, the tenderness in relationships we assume will always be there, and the strange way time seems to accelerate as we age. He writes about fathers and friends, about work and weariness, about the small dignities of getting through another day. There is no pretension here, no obscurantism only clarity and a kind of stubborn humanity. For readers who have ever felt that poetry was not for them, Guest offers proof that the simplest truths are often the hardest to say.