Threshold
By: Jennifer Richter
Series: Crab Orchard Series in Poetry; Crab Orchard award series in poetry
Publisher: Crab Orchard Review; Southern Illinois University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Carbondale
Language: eng
Number of pages: 74
ISBN-13: 9780809329656
Description: Jennifer Richter presents a series of poems that explore the many facets of the term "threshold." Throughout the collection, the narrator experiences several acts of threshing, or separatingfrom birth and the small yet profound distances that part a mother and child, to the separation caused by illness and its toll on relationships. At the same time, she is progressively gathering, piecing together the remnants of her life, collecting her children into her arms, and welcoming a future without pain. Pain is often present in these poems, as the narrator frequently confronts her own threshold for enduring a ravaging illness. Her harrowing struggle through recovery is chronicled by a poem at the end of each section, tracing her powerful journey from deep suffering to a fragile yet steadfast sense of hope.