Homing In: Attempts on a Life
of Poetry and Purpose
Alexandria Quarterly Press, August 2023
Signed copies now available to order.
The essays in Homing In: Attempts on a Life of Poetry and Purpose are insightful, meditative missives on love, motherhood, solitude and relationship, food, faith, beauty and suffering, set against the backdrop of reading and writing. As both memoir and literary criticism, this collection is a genuine achievement. It is also a valuable resource—for all readers, parents, lovers, livers of life; a reference book, a manual, a survival guide from a mother, wife, woman who has been there before. Any reader who has felt desire or experienced loss, been moved by words, weather, or wanderlust—anyone essentially human—will find something waiting for them, welcoming them, within these pages. —Robbi Jennifer Overbey, author of Endlessly Small (Alexandria Quarterly Press)
“A poet I know recently remarked that we have less to say as we age. Another poet wrote that, "There are surprisingly few poems about the complexity of long relationships. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that there are fewer poems about long-term relationships and parenting teenage or adult children than I need. Without poems to light the way, a path is even harder to discern and/or invent." Perhaps we have less to say because we are less inclined to draw conclusions; more reluctant to over-interpret or impose an order where there isn’t any. Perhaps what we can offer by way of lighting the path is simply to describe it, in all of its symphonic complexity: the mile stones and landmarks, the pitfalls, the twists and turns, the creatures lurking in the dark (and in broad daylight), the sun shining, for what it’s worth.”
— from “Wild Things,” Homing In
“Maybe this, too, explains why, as our ranks grow thinner, we are apt to ally ourselves across species, feeling more akin to plants and animals, flowers and kittens, than to politicians and celebrities. Our needs are simple now, we say to one another: feed me, water me, warm me with your touch, let me bask a little longer in the last light and I in my turn will do the same for you.”
— from “True Companions,” Homing In
“But at no time have we not been trying. At no time have I ceased to love my children with all my heart and to want for them the happiness and well-being that every parent wants, that we all want for those we love—and, too, for ourselves: I can’t help but feel for my own parents, who didn’t get to see me graduate from college until I was 36 years old, and have never yet been able to enjoy the peace of mind that might have come from seeing me financially and relationally secure. After all, at forty-four, I am on the verge of another major separation, another move, another reinvention. I wish desperately that this weren’t the case, for my parents’ sakes, for my children’s sakes, and for my own, but I also know they love me no less for it, nor I them. Our love and our lives aren’t easily Instagram-able, aren’t easy, but they are ours, and we are one another’s, and I wouldn’t have it otherwise.”
— from “Open Season,” Homing In