Synopsis:

She Alone, a book-length poetic sequence, traces the life of an imaginary woman from birth to death and beyond, employing a wide range of forms from free verse to heroic couplets and a broad array of poetic devices, all designed to capture the changing moods and circumstances of this enigmatic, nameless woman and her lifelong struggle to find fulfillment, connection, and a stable sense of her own place and identity in a rapidly changing world.   

Book Excerpt:

A Poem from "She Alone"

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Home

This place suffused not 
with spirits but thin traces
gaunt remains of deeds 
done words spoken or left 
unsaid undone undoes her 
now all these years later 
coming back to find she 
has no home not even one 
away from home no firm 
connection to the earth no 
place that calls her back 
and says abide here you 
will thrive and feel fully 
alive don’t look back or 
so the wisdom goes and 
maybe it’s always folly 
this effort to visit a past 
life situation context lost 
dissolved surrendered at 
the border to some newer
world so many years ago 
some lustrous future once 
her future till it too grew 
old became no more than 
just another past she’ll 
try to visit someday and 
discover it too lies beyond 
her grasp teasing her with 
dangled shards of fact 
fragments of circumstance
so many places where she 
once existed still exist
themselves after a fashion
still remain but do not
know her name.

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Topics/Categories:

Women's Lives

Genre:

American Poetry

Type of Work:

Poetry Collection

Purchase From:

Salmon Poetry Online Bookshop
Dufour Editions
AMAZON.COM

Original Publish Date:

May 1, 2006

Publishing Notes:

Published in Ireland by Salmon Poetry and distributed in the U.S. by Dufour Editions. Also available on Amazon. REVIEWS: "One of the best books of 2006. She Alone evokes the life of a woman artist in fifty-odd lyrics, each in a different form, each handled with unobtrusive panache. Here is a book in which style and substance harmonize ... poetry with a human center ... smart and affecting ... utterly original." The Hudson Review "A unique experience ... enthusiastically recommended." Midwest Book Review

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