The Elusive Hold and Other Poems

The Elusive Hold deals with the first stirrings of passion of first love and also the whole range of feelings engendered by first having and then losing a first love. It also deals with more mature love and feelings engendered by both finding and losing a mature love. There are three different loves addressed in the love poems. The Elusive Hold also examines the many moods of spiritual love and awareness, of finding and keeping a love that cannot be lost. Human love is a prototype for divine love and the feelings involved in human love can merge into divine love. Mr. Odegaard has been inspired by poets of British and American romantic poetry: Woodsworth and Coleridge, Byron, Keats and Shelly. He has also sought inspiration in Holderlin, Rilke, Hopkins, Gray, Mandelstam and Trakl. He also must include Hawthorne, Melville and Hart Crane.