The Burning of Troy was catalyzed by the rapid death of Richard Foerster's partner of fifteen years. However, Foerster's lines are less a private testament of loss and grief than the universal voicing of a lover's confrontation with mortality. To connect to this universal experience, Foerster consciously employs various distancing devices, voices, and mythic allusions. And, as always in his poetry, there is an attention to the natural world with its hidden symbolic and metaphysical resonances.