Compass Rose

Compass Rosetraces a significant year in the poet's life; the poems delineate an arc of death into life. The collection begins with the poet's mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer. It follows her mother's illness, death, and burial and remembrance. The chapbook delights in the celebration of life and the unexpected joys to be found amidst deep sorrows. The poems are rooted in love, landscape, and journey. They delight in the power of the word, and in the poet's discovery of the written word and its ancestors, such as her poem, "Listening to Seamus Heaney." Ultimately, Compass Rose finds diurnal power in the mundane, power in the extraordinary passage of life into death, and solace again by the healing laps of the ocean. The poems express reverence for the power of human life, for the enduring bonds between parents and children, between mothers and their mothers, between mothers and their sons and daughters.