In the Next Life - by Joan Baranow (Paperback)

About the Book

The lilt and love, the trust and thrust, the pain and gain of these poems, is simply marvelous. In the Next Life reminds me of what I often forget-that poetry can be radiant. Radiant equally in sunlight and darkness. I am so grateful for this book. -Alicia Ostriker, author of Waiting for the Light

Book Synopsis

Joan Baranow's powerful new collection of poems, In the Next Life, reminds us that it is our passage through this life that constantly shapes the next. Our place in and passages through the natural world reflect both the questions of childhood and those few wisdoms we hope to share as adults. Always, the speaker of these poems ("closer to the end/than to birth, dreaming of death" she says) recalls a boy's question: "How does light climb the tree?" In these elegant poems of daily mortal passage, Joan Baranow is also asking, in every line, how might we, each of us, slowly climb that light? These are poems of constancy and moral courage.

--David St. John, author of The Last Troubadour: Selected and New Poems