The prosodic gift twines with memory, as if the early incidents had actually formed and forced such articulation. Out of the dire moment, breath and will. Out of such pride and memory, the power of speech, poetry. Each poem moves, as if inevitably, to the fulfillment of its own occasion, charming the reader by turns. The girl only dimly understands, from family hints, that something awful had happened to this banished teenager.
Sympathy graces the poem, with honest humor, as the child watches the young aunt undressing.
Economy of language, long trails of experience. But the poems also honor the long sustained relationship, the paradox of marriage, not what we'd been taught to expect, but the bittersweet and disappointing mixed with the flare of romance, the image of a face coming home, the vivid memory of a guy's laughter. At the same time that the woman, moving on her own after years and struggles, enjoys being apart, she is deeply a part of something bonded. This is obviously not a feminist tract. Honesty and wit save these poems from preachment.