What wondrous poems are these
James Crews's poetry is at once ecstatic, skeptical, and hopeful.
Poems of witness
Molly McCully Brown recovers the lives of women at an institution notorious for its eugenics program.
Psalm 137 for Noah
Come darling, sit by my side and weep.
I have no lyre, no melodious voice or chant.
I meditate on the Zion I could never grant you....
Poetic nothingness
This collection is suffused with one of poetry’s most fundamental aims: making meaning out of suffering and loss.
Nut salvation
In the crate of ornaments not to be touched,rested in cotton my mother’s golden walnuts:glass, thinner than egg shells, easily shattered.She hung them from the boughs herself....
Apple salvation
There’s a stranger in the field of apples.Somebody’s hands have left a blushon the Staymans, have scattered half-rotten fruit in which wasps will burrow....
On our anniversary
The Quaker Meeting House in which we wed
was shabby—its carpet faded Wedgewood blue,
no festive flowers in a vase, or ribboned pews....
Coincidence
The same morning I press my shorn chestflat against an x-ray machine, my sisterpushes from her body a baby girl.Praise God, whose hand passes over itself...
Jesus climbing trees
Let this, too, be a source of praise,that trees meet in the park like six-winged seraphim, stooping low enoughfor a boy to find foothold...