Myra Shapiro

One of Myra Shapiro’s many wonderful poetry volumes, describing with eloquent humor and frankness the wide dimensions of a life well lived. The book is in four thematic sections, but permeated throughout with poems about family — her mother (“whose bones were never known to me”), father (“his neon wouldn’t quit”), grandson (“heavenly labials in a world of gutterals”), husband (“safely harbored in the dark / we find a new truth just by floating”), sister, children, and show more more. Contained herein are also poems about art and writing (with mentions of such companions as Grace Paley and Galway Kinnell), solitary travel adventures in such places as Bruges and Ireland, and musings on Judaic traditions, as well as the approach of death (“without the comedy of an afterlife, there’s only dying....You see what I’m up against”). In the poem “The Ocean and the Kitchen,” she’s alone on a beach, thinking about a watery death, until she turns and sees “the house, the women / had come back from Race Point / and the lamps were on.” This is the effect of Myra’s poetry—when you’re alone and afraid, you can see through the windows of her poetic house that the lights are on and she’s inviting you in. show less