Possession and loss, rapture and despair: St. John's narrator remains unflinchingly aware that the trajectory between these two states is both brief and irresistible. Like a modern Dante's Virgil, he guides readers through a mosaic of experiences to depict file vast architecture of erotic desire and communion. The sexual bond, with its potential for the breakdown of all spiritual and physical boundaries, becomes the site of psychological and erotic tension that runs throughout the collection. The Red Leaves of Wight finds its breathtaking power in a recognition of the necessary impermanence of such communion, and gives voice to that most courageous of men -- one who grasps the dangers of ecstasy; yet cannot turn away.