Practicing for Heaven
Description:... Poetry. Winner of the 1998 Anhinga Prize for Poetry. Stranded in that clockless month of her arrival, / I listen to our neighbor sawing down back doors, / rock her, tiny fists of breath uncurling, / while the details of each afternoon are revealed. This is a luminous, breath-stopping book. Each poem is complete, each renders an intense encounter between the poet and what she loves: the 'sensate world' in all its complexity of color, contour, and human emotion. ... The eye makes us look while the words impel us toward feeling something of the poet's present -- a present charged with memories, hopes, and a sensitivity like that of the fontanelle: the soft spot on a baby's head invoked in one of the most striking poems in this brilliant first book -- Margaret W. Fergus
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