Mother's Maiden Name (Paperback)

Fragments of memory become the meters by which a life is marked in Anne Colwell's MOTHER'S MAIDEN NAME, artfully sculpted, intensely felt. "Pressing words into our palms, Colwell details 'the pain brought...from somewhere beyond this canvas' a father's fizzled dreams, a mother's addiction, the artist's awareness of the 'the almost.' An ekphrastic poem's speaker wonders, 'What do you need me to be?' Colwell doesn't need to ask this question herself. She knows what we need her to be: a witness for 'where we're going or where we've been, ' the voice that says, 'There.'"--Erin Murphy "Anne Colwell's poems steam and scorch, pulsing with stars, fish, birds, blood, and seawater as they track the moments of familial connection and disconnection that underlie the 'disordered passion of living.' Terse and expansive, tough and tender, these hard gems 'cut deep' but also shine."--Meredith Davies Hadaway