To Get Here

Poetry. Once I knew that name,/ whispered it/ before sleep. Now/ my tongue tangles,/ straw brittles in my hands. Wendy Mnookin writes with subtle exactness about the charmed and fragile circle of family life -- in sweet and haunted particulars that are movingly ordinary, and American. Where most poets want to use glittering acts of insight to pierce the life lived together by parents and children, Mnookin practices an understanding rooted in almost spiritual detachment -- David Rivard.