Full Description
These poems address the universal experiences of death and loss, putting the complicated feelings of grief into words.
Uncertain Acrobats evokes the feeling of unraveling. The central concern of this narrative is the death of a parent and the fumbling for balance a dying father and his adult daughter share. Rebecca Hart Olander's intimate collection doesn't shy away from darkness, but it also strives for light, which resides in music and open-hearted humanity. These poems arc across the terrain of divorce, family, childhood, coming of age, mortality, and deep, abiding love, always landing with a foothold in the genuine. A manifestation of what endures after grief has unraveled our closest bonds, Uncertain Acrobats reaches beyond the author's personal experience of grief. This collection speaks to all whose lives have been upended by terminal illness or the loss of a beloved person.
Contents
Supermoon
I. learning to release
Tickseed
Origins
The Mostly Vacant Photo Album of My Parents' Short Marriage
Before the Divorce
Adirondack Paradelle
Ode to Throw Pillows
Until Now
"Brown Penny"
She gave me my first journal;
Trigger
Lilac Sundays
Joint-Custody Commute
Algebra
Driving Lessons
Tidal Basin
College Cathexis
My Aesop
Peine forte et dure
Josephine Grace
II. no trampoline
Find Alternate Routes
The Cancer Is Back
Veterans Day on Authors Ridge
There's No Place Like Home
Circling Great Meadows
Turritopsis dohrnii
Grand Central Station
Glossolalia
Husk
Advent Calendar
Red Cloud
Fortune
Ascension
III. riding the wind
Fool's Gold
Feeding the Dead
Visitation
The Highway
Easter; after You've Gone
Mockingbird Elegy
Calling Song
Mourning Walk
Remains
Without You; I'm an Out-of-Work Engineer
My Father's Burial Clothes
The Whale
My Heaven Would Be Studded with Fathers
The Acolyte at My Door Asks Me; How Do You Pray?
Return to Great Meadows
Notes
Acknowledgements
