Bring Me Her Heart

These poems are the meditations of a woman well embarked upon the last half of life's journey.Told in the poet's own voice as well as by characters from history and ancient story, they focus on the pain and joy of creation, the endurance of love, and the encounter with old age and mortality. By turn thought-provoking, witty, irreverent, and deeply felt, the poems are embodied in vivid imagery and meticulous structure. Combining the strengths of intellect and imagination, this collection explores what is lost and found as we make our way through the forest.

I. Those Who Struggle With the Difficulties of Composition

This section includes poems about creators such as Gepetto, Leonardo, Thoreau, Lewis Carroll, and an anonymous artist who may be the poet herself. Themes here are: the difficulties of creation and expression, the varieties and by-ways of love, the contrast between sexual (natural) reproduction and artistic creation, and the creator's desire to escape or conquer mortality.

II. That Old Story

Re-tellings of old stories ranging from Greek mythology and The Frog Prince to Victor Frankenstein and his monster. These poems, too, touch on creation, time, age, and mortality. The poem after which the collection is named, "Bring Me Her Heart," re-interprets the Snow White story. It tells in allegory how the poet comes to love and forgive her mother as her mother reaches extreme old age.

III. Eleusis

This is a sequence of six poems on the poet's feelings about and interactions with her mother just before, and just after, the mother's death. Set in the context of the Eleusinian Mysteries, it employs quotations from and references to accounts of the Mysteries, as well as the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. In addition to the confrontation with physical decay, a major theme is the mother's role in handing down to her children a love of language and poetry.

IV. Late Day

These are mostly shorter, lyric poems. Here nature embodies life's physical and spiritual pleasures, but also hints at the poet's sense of mortality, both her own and her husband's. Two of the poems reach back to the poet's childhood and one includes her daughter, thus placing the poet in a sequence of generations.

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