Willow (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798289666246)

Each poem in Willow is set in or close to a city in Michigan. Outside Traverse City, spring peepers and bullfrogs keep me awake in an upstairs bedroom of my grandparents' farmhouse. In Battle Creek, the air smells like cereal on rainy days. In Marquette, a yearling moose in the cemetery mirrors the slower pace of life in the Upper Peninsula. In Detroit, my daughter and I witness the Detroit Tigers clinch a Wild Card shot. But most of the poems concern day-to-day life now, in Lansing; specifically, on West Willow Street, near the periphery of the Old Forest Neighborhood. If that sounds lovely and sylvan, the reality is more urban, more complex. What is it like to live here? At every stage of life, what is the relationship between psyche and place, surroundings and self?