A Hummingbird in the Garage

In Heather Ann Shepard's poem "My Mother's Bones," she asks if there is "A place where we can ask the questions that no one is willing to answer." She created that place in the poems of A Hummingbird in the Garage, her new collection filled with surprise, grace, the weight of absence and loss, and a love for all the inter-woven parts of the world. Whether it's the surprise of a hummingbird out-of-place in a garage or "the grass remembering your footprints," her poems, time and time again, "make/something/completely new." In "Grace," she says, "I think this is what grace sounds like." Reading A Hummingbird in the Garage, who could answer anything but yes? - Antonio Vallone, Publisher, MAMMOTH books; Poetry editor, Pennsylvania English