Homespun and Angel Feathers

Book excerpt: Darlene Young's poems celebrate the beauty, humor, and pathos of everyday life in wise and surprising ways. She is unafraid to explore the depth and breadth of familiar subjects, locating the divine in the mundane, exploding the myth that in order to live deliberately, the poet must go out into the woods, alone. Surrounded by a houseful of teenagers, grappling with the demands of middle age, confronting health problems, balancing church and professional responsibilities, simply getting the dishes done--it is in the midst of all of this lived experience that Young stops and takes note. Suffused with crackling language and precise imagery, her poetry helps us stop and take note as well. --Angela Hallstrom, author of Bound on Earth, and editor of Dispensation: Latter-day Fiction