Abstract

This collection of poetry is divided into two parts. The first contains two narrative sequences. The first sequence is a biography of a woman killed by her husband, prefaced by several poems about her granddaughter's attempt to come to terms with this aspect of the family history as well as found poems excerpted from newspaper articles about the murderer. The second sequence follows the granddaughter's pregnancy and the birth of a child abandoned by its father, all within a framework of tarot mysticism. The second part is comprised of lyric poems indirectly exploring this legacy of violence and abandonment, eventually opening to the possibility of new love. The final long poem, composed of nine lyrics of five couplets, reflects the speaker's ambivalence about marriage in her contemplation of nature.