No Eden

Book excerpt: Poetry. The poems in NO EDEN merge the landscapes of a rainy girlhood in the American South and the mythic world of Noah and the Flood. In these poems, a backyard stretches between a mother and daughter—the lessons of "distance tender and biblical." The Carolina yard opens to hold the fruits of Eve and Lilith, the flight of Noah's raven and dove, the small terrors of curbs and classrooms. These are poems of "a family awake through a storm," an intimate theology of floods, loss, and betrayal. But NO EDEN suggests a source of possible comfort, of slow quiet mercy and forgiveness. Perhaps there once was an Eden, even if it is no longer there. Its having possibly existed offers us hope that there may still be an Eden within, one we can somehow attain through beauty, luck and hope.