Catch Me While You Have the Light, Mr. Halperin’s fourth collection for Salmon, emphasises what one poem calls ‘the so what of the different’ in the luminous startling language which has characterised his work from the beginning. Jesus, Miss Marple, Henry James, make brief appearances. Ireland, France, Japan, make longer appearances. Many love poems. People, whether friends or strangers, who are no longer here, are in fact still here, caught – as in a poem about Venice – ‘in the gum of time.’ Joseph Woods has written, ‘like all great artists, Halperin makes no distinction between the living and the dead.’