BE(LONGING)

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Poetry. Women's Studies. Our core, our humanity, finds expression in language. That core is linked by a genetic thread to other living beings. It is linked to a human past that is personal, social, and universal. These reflections and relationships are counterpoint to a moment of beauty, or perhaps horror: "Red surge of war news: rubble / bodies fragile, fragility understood and denied" ("Heart Valves"). The poems in BE(LONGING) explore being, desire, and context. Belonging: "set in a right or rightful place, but / originally, go along with" ("Nomad"). There are poems in this collection about keeping company with the dead and dying, with past selves, and with essential presences, like a grown daughter, "two elements bordering like states of being. // Crossing over. How to negotiate and adapt, girl to woman to mother" ("San Francisco Coastline"). Language prevails. Nine meanings of the Latin verb interesse are a riff on the English word interest. The definition "lie between or be separated" "prompts Outlier status, and maybe intrusions from either direction / keep apart lovers, the living from the dead" ("It's Not All about You.") The human body preserved after death: "Nasal cavities are carvings--/ wooden frog of a cello, a lute's ivory fretwork." "Process" is a whimsical description of composing a poem: "With an owl eye, / Aim for inevitable and whittle / With a paring knife.