Summary

In language of the street and of the heart, Belle Waring has put together another wonderful (her second) collection of poems (see annotation of Refuge, her first collection). She writes of relationships starting and ending; her work experience as a nurse--the powerful "It Was My First Nursing Job," "From the Diary of a Clinic Nurse, Poland, 1945," and "Twenty-Four Week Preemie, Change of Shift"; and other miraculous everyday events of living with eyes wide open as exemplified in "The Brothers on the Trash Truck and my Near-Death Experience" and "Fever, Mood, and Crows."

Commentary

These poems express in striking rawness a deep sympathy for those (the poor, the weak, the vulnerable, the odd) we in the "caring" professions too often regard with disdain--if we're not too busy ignoring them. Sprinklings of humor, hope and heroism prevent the overall effect of the work from becoming maudlin or polemical.

Publisher

Sarabande

Place Published

Louisville, Ky.

Edition

1997

Page Count

72