Life Watch: A Circle of Ninety-One Nights is an ambitious sequence of -poems that begins in childhood, moves through Barnstone’s adult years, and returns to youth. The poems engage and reflect on the civil wars that the author found himself in the midst of, Mexican orphanages, the cafes and arts salons in Paris, and walking with Borges. As the circles of these poems widen, they gather many perspectives on a life watched.

Willis Barnstone has taught at universities in Greece and Argentina and authored more than 40 books—poetry collections, poetry translations, philosophical and religious texts. The New Covenant, his literary translation of the New Testament, was published in 2001 (Riverhead Books).