The Dream Women Called

Through the poems in The Dream Women Called, Lori Wilson attends to the spirits of depression, uncertainty, and fear while wondering at the beauty in whats broken, the remarkable in the ordinary, and the balm that the natural world can offer. Following a single speaker, were reminded how many lives one woman can live. This book is about crossing into a new version of your own storyafter a marriage ends, the parents die, the children are grown, or the faith is discardedand finding a place to stand, a new way to take up space in the world. Uniting past and present, these poems create multifaceted portraits, particularly of relationships between mothers and daughters. Wilsons poems sift through memory, dreams, art, imagination, nature, and close observation, turning each discovery over in order to see it fully. Beneath the fine-grained imagery of these lyric excavations are the sometimes opposing but fundamental desires to be whole and to be seen, which often means looking within as well as turning toward the world outside. The speaker is listening always for the dream women who call, for whatever may beckon from the present and future, preparing her in some way for a life thats truly hers.