More than 300 poems and a few prose pieces by modern writers such as Maya Angelou, Annie Dillard, Denise Levertov, Marge Piercy and Alice Walker, and earlier writers such as Hildegard of Bingen and Margaret Fuller. A splendid collection, organized thematically, that can be used as a sourcebook for public rituals, group gatherings, or personal reflection. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

This is a beautiful book, a collection of shimmering poems by women writers that illuminates every phase and sphere of life. Sewell, a Unitarian minister, also edited the acclaimed anthology Cries of the Spirit: A Celebration of Women's Spirituality (1990), and her eye and ear for poetry shaped by spiritual thought--be it contemplative or ornery, thankful or sorrowful--are keen and sensitive. Here she has selected poems by 158 poets, both writers new to us and writers as celebrated as Anne Sexton, Tess Gallagher, Sharon Olds, Denise Levertov, Lucille Clifton, Linda Hogan, Kathleen Norris, and Rita Dove, and gathered them together under such provocative headings as "Generations," "Defiance," "Identity," "Simple Blessings," "Compassion," and "Love, Family, Friendship." This is indeed a sourcebook, drawing, as it does, on the source of our innermost feelings, questions, fears, and dreams, the spirit within and without, the "unstoppable gift," as Jane Hirshfield so aptly names it. --Donna Seaman From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Acknowledgments	p. xvii
Introduction	p. 1
From This We Come
Generations
Poem in September, on My Mother's Birthday	p. 9
When I Feel Most Like Her	p. 10
I Go Back to May 1937	p. 11
Where I'm From	p. 12
On the Hovander Homestead	p. 13
The Grandmother Songs	p. 13
To Jacqueline, Age 2, in Her Great-Grandmother's House	p. 15
Forgiveness	p. 16
Giving Back the World	p. 17
Fury	p. 18
Daughters	p. 18
I Am Asking You to Come Back Home	p. 19
I Stop Writing the Poem	p. 20
With Stars	p. 20
The Sleeping	p. 21
Thrall	p. 22
Totems: Three Generations	p. 23
The Woman Who Loved Worms	p. 24
Pokeberries	p. 25
Final Disposition	p. 26
Newborn	p. 27
Defiance
Hair	p. 31
Sending the Mare to Auction	p. 31
Exposure	p. 33
Refusing Silence	p. 33
Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School	p. 34
I Knew I'd Sing	p. 35
Knowing My Name	p. 36
Amelia Earhart Rag Doll	p. 37
Pagan	p. 37
The Circus of Levitation	p. 38
Becoming a Nun	p. 39
The Drum Majorette Marries at Calvary Baptist	p. 40
The Necessity	p. 41
Taking In Wash	p. 42
Untitled	p. 43
How She Was Saved	p. 45
Jeanne d'Arc	p. 45
The Right Thing	p. 46
Desperate Measures	p. 47
The Terms of Endurance	p. 48
Crossing	p. 49
Hawks	p. 50
Identity
Primer (excerpt)	p. 53
Portrait d'une Femme	p. 53
A Woman Alone	p. 54
Variation on a Theme by Rilke (The Book of Hours, Book I, Poem 1, Stanza 1)	p. 55
Defining It For Vanessa	p. 56
Arms (excerpt)	p. 57
Teresa of Avila	p. 58
The Rockettes	p. 59
Skylights	p. 60
Naming the Animals	p. 61
Consorting with Angels	p. 62
Invisibility Poem: Lesbian	p. 63
We All Have Many Chances	p. 64
Power Failure	p. 64
I Was Born	p. 65
Turning	p. 66
It was a dream	p. 67
The Daughter Who Sings	p. 67
With Apologies to Nancy Drew	p. 68
The Stammer	p. 69
Daystar	p. 70
All These Dreams	p. 71
By This We Live
The Earth and Her Creatures
My Mother	p. 77
For a Wedding on Mount Tamalpais	p. 78
Happiness	p. 78
The Love of Aged Horses	p. 79
The earth is a living thing	p. 80
Among the Cows	p. 80
The Lull	p. 81
Jug Brook	p. 82
Bats	p. 82
Demeter	p. 83
The Summer Day	p. 83
Wild Geese	p. 84
The Fallen	p. 84
Other, Sister, Twin	p. 86
Muskogee	p. 88
Prayer	p. 89
Poem	p. 89
Credo	p. 90
The Filbert Orchard	p. 91
Burdock	p. 92
The Body
Making Tortillas	p. 95
Strung	p. 96
Surviving	p. 97
The Laundromat	p. 97
The Dieter's Daughter	p. 98
Love the human	p. 99
Song at midnight	p. 100
Smell	p. 100
Tits	p. 101
This Part of Your Body	p. 102
Night Sweat	p. 103
The Lesson	p. 103
Skin	p. 105
Christmas Eve: My Mother Dressing	p. 106
To Those of My Sisters Who Kept Their Naturals	p. 107
Women's Aerobics Class	p. 108
Eve Falling	p. 109
Simple Blessings
Little Things	p. 113
Challah	p. 113
Stranded in Mobridge by a Spring Blizzard	p. 114
Must We Train Ourselves to Be as Doves	p. 115
Groundhog Day	p. 116
Winter Light	p. 116
Friday Afternoon: The Rabbi's Wife	p. 117
Ella, in a Square Apron, Along Highway 80	p. 118
Washing Sheets in July	p. 118
Happiness	p. 119
Yard Sale	p. 120
In the Kitchen We String Beans	p. 121
Each Thing Measured by the Same Sun	p. 122
Except for Laura Secord (or Famous Women from Canada's Past)	p. 123
A Hardware Store As Proof of the Existence of God	p. 123
Salvadoran Salsa	p. 124
To Make History	p. 125
Love, Family, Friendship
Every Fact Is a Field	p. 129
For Jan, in Bar Maria	p. 130
Yellow Roses	p. 130
Sunday Night, Driving Home	p. 131
Easter Sunday, 1955	p. 132
Recalling The Family Group, a Sculpture by Henry Moore	p. 133
A Letter from Margaret to Her Sister	p. 134
Variation on the Door	p. 134
At the Cafe Saint Jacques	p. 135
Negative Space	p. 136
Motion	p. 137
The Lost Bells of Heaven	p. 138
Attraction	p. 138
Fishing Seahorse Reef	p. 139
Daylily	p. 140
China	p. 140
The Dancers	p. 141
Variation on the Word Sleep	p. 142
Ecstasy	p. 143
Cathay	p. 143
Personal Ad	p. 144
Seduction	p. 145
Harlem	p. 145
Secure	p. 146
Familiar	p. 147
For My Husband Sleeping Alone	p. 148
Dulzura	p. 149
Wish	p. 149
Poem in Praise of My Husband	p. 150
The Garden	p. 151
Wanting All	p. 152
Shazam	p. 153
You Lay Between Us From April Until July	p. 155
The Summit of Wives	p. 155
Divorce	p. 156
Divorce	p. 158
Bitch	p. 159
Answered Prayers	p. 160
From Fullness We Give
Conception and Birthing
To My Still-Unconceived Daughter	p. 165
The Name of My Daughter	p. 165
Infertility	p. 166
Could It Have Been the Fine Thread?	p. 167
The Premonition	p. 168
Middle Child	p. 168
Miscarriage	p. 170
Bone Poem	p. 170
Creation	p. 171
The Run of Silvers	p. 172
Elena at Five Years	p. 173
Annunciation	p. 174
Hymn	p. 174
Toward the Music	p. 175
Stone Fruit	p. 176
And I am a lucky woman	p. 177
Margaret Fuller in the Abruzzi Mountains, June 1848	p. 178
Incarnation	p. 179
For Alva Benson, And For Those Who Have Learned To Speak	p. 180
Mothering
Pastoral	p. 185
Collage: Mother, Daughter, Child, and Book	p. 185
In the Ocean	p. 186
There are times in life when one does the right thing	p. 188
For my husband's mother	p. 189
Letter to the Children	p. 190
The Meaning of Bones	p. 191
When Persephone Leaves	p. 192
The Boston School of Cooking Cookbook	p. 193
The Power in My Mother's Arms	p. 194
Elinor Frost's Marble-topped Kneading Table	p. 195
Surviving (excerpt)	p. 196
Signing My Name	p. 197
The Silver Shoes	p. 198
Dreams in Harrison Railroad Park	p. 199
Eve of the Longest Day	p. 200
Seeing the Aurora with Emily	p. 201
Illness
February Letter	p. 205
Locked Ward, Newtown, Connecticut	p. 206
Still	p. 207
Mammogram	p. 208
Two	p. 209
The Line	p. 210
Scar	p. 210
The Man of Many L's	p. 211
Winter-Seeming Summer	p. 213
The Woman Who Could Not Live with Her Faulty Heart	p. 213
Praying to Big Jack	p. 214
When I Understood	p. 215
Naked Ladies	p. 216
For Jan as the End Draws Near	p. 217
Go Gentle	p. 218
Mid-American Tragedy	p. 219
Close to Death	p. 219
Red Poppy	p. 220
Death
Food Chain	p. 225
The Great Blue Heron	p. 225
Between Losses	p. 227
Burying the Past	p. 228
The Legacy	p. 229
Living with the Dead	p. 230
Listening	p. 231
Salt	p. 232
Retrospect in the Kitchen	p. 234
My Cousin Dancing	p. 234
Summation	p. 235
Paradise	p. 236
Infinite Room	p. 237
Another Elegy	p. 238
Health	p. 239
Girlfriend	p. 240
In Memory: After a Friend's Sudden Death	p. 241
Aging
Aging Female Poet on Laundry Day	p. 245
Aging Female Poet Sits on the Balcony	p. 245
Cross Currents	p. 246
Dogwoods at Forty-One	p. 247
The Power of Place	p. 248
Poem for the Old Woman I Am Becoming	p. 248
The Crows	p. 249
Untitled	p. 250
The Gloves	p. 250
Grace Enters Armageddon	p. 251
All My Friends' Pets Are Growing Old	p. 252
The Lovers at Eighty	p. 253
Bird Lady	p. 254
At the Roosevelt Baths	p. 255
Gather	p. 257
When She Laughs	p. 258
Hunchback	p. 259
The Bird Woman	p. 260
We Bless Those Who Follow
Compassion
Learning CPR	p. 267
Back from the City	p. 268
Choice	p. 269
Sickness	p. 269
Solitary	p. 270
Selective Service	p. 270
The Argument, 1973	p. 271
Blood	p. 272
The Use of Fiction	p. 273
Painting of a White Gate and Sky	p. 274
Vespers	p. 275
Bread and Water	p. 276
Can't Tell	p. 276
Women Bathing at Bergen-Belsen	p. 277
Memorial Day	p. 277
Bob	p. 278
Easter: The Lame Bull	p. 279
News Report, September 1991	p. 280
January 1991	p. 282
The Woman Hanging From The Thirteenth Floor Window	p. 283
The Adamsons' Peacocks	p. 285
Near Roscoe and Coldwater (excerpt)	p. 286
The Weighing	p. 286
Touched	p. 287
Work
The Piemaker	p. 291
Portraits in Contradiction	p. 291
Restaurant	p. 292
The Magician	p. 293
Living in the Barn	p. 294
Night Shift at the Fruit Cannery	p. 294
The Women Always Wave the Flags	p. 295
Why I Make the Best Barrels	p. 296
A Woman in a Car Driving	p. 296
The Lesson	p. 297
Gertrude Kasebier	p. 299
Call the Interval Happiness	p. 300
God and the Artists' Colony	p. 301
Risk	p. 302
My Poems	p. 302
Work	p. 303
Ars Poetica Feminae (excerpt)	p. 303
Woman of Light	p. 304
Mother Notes for Elaine	p. 305
Poet's Manual	p. 306
For Those Whom the Gods Love Less	p. 307
Poem White Page White Page Poem	p. 307
Who	p. 308
Partings	p. 311
Making a Fist	p. 312
The Hermit	p. 312
Snowdrops	p. 313
An Act of Faith	p. 313
Meatballs	p. 314
The Whale	p. 315
The Well	p. 316
The Sky Could Send You	p. 316
In Memory	p. 318
Growing Light	p. 318
The Healing Time	p. 319
Courage	p. 320
The Door	p. 321
Nothing	p. 322
Credits	p. 323
Subject Index	p. 337
Index of Contributors	p. 342

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