Tuned to the instruments of dark… the gods in pieces around her, Anne Love Woodhull has given us a book to embrace when our own hours become uncertain. These poems pierce. Woodhull desires conflagration, not ceremony, wants more than reflection, an exploration of the interior dark, of how challenge is lived, of where fear fits. A moth walks along a neck. Locusts chew leaves into skeletons. What is unknown is as important as what is known. Whether summoning the memory of a newborn calf in a freezing barn, ghosts, or burning boats, caught in the unbearable in between, Woodhull is unblinking and brave. These poems allow us to be brave with her.
ANNE LOVE WOODHULL has co-authored three children’s books and is the author of This Is What We Have (March Street Press, 2001,) a poetry chapbook. Working with children and adults, she is a therapist and teacher. For the last thirty years, she and her husband, Gordon Thorne, have provided space for the development of creative work on Main Street in Northampton, Massachusetts. They also preserve open land in the town of Amherst to encourage the collaboration of organic farming, exploration, learning, and the arts.
