Book

Stranger / Laura Sims.

Sims, Laura, 1973- (Author).

Summary:

A mother's illness and early death is only the beginning of the story of Stranger, Laura Sims' second collection. This is the death whose presence and particulars are felt and inscribed, and which achieves an agency, a purview, a resistance. We feel the loss from all angles, even as Sims' episodic, quicksilver narrative moves up and through a mother's life and its incompletion, her apprehension in the face of death, a surviving child's guilt and the adult child's attempts at comprehension of who/what the mother is, now that she's gone. In the end there is a hopeful hopelessness in approaching Eternity. Laura Sims' delicacy and agility are equal to her forbearance, and all are up to the remarkable task of recounting a laife and afterlife.

Record details

ISBN: 9781934200230
ISBN: 1934200239
Physical Description: 78 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Albany, N.Y. : Fence Books, [2009]
Copyright: ℗♭2009

Content descriptions

Formatted Contents Note:

Blank (1943-1973): Seemed to have crossed a dark lake ; She makes sounds ; In her holiday dress for the world ; The way she loves her ; The water keeps hanging us up ; Mouth full of bread ; Old-world romance ends ; She made it through ; In pristine trappings she warms to the earth ; Not yours, but another's ; Is this what life -- Another country (1992): We were less involved with the lake ; A green wall reminds her of summer ; Those not worthy are scattered wide ; Behind her eyes ; She felt ; What breaks ; On a manicured lawn of such green, the end ; For all we know -- Letters from elsewhere, part I (1992) -- Letters from elsewhere, part II (1993) -- Elsewhere (1992- ): A final capsule ; They rouse themselves, and are not themselves ; What is ; She is water poured out ; From her mud plateau ; Wherever we went the mountains followed ; My hand, too small for gathering ; Thanksgiving: the barn-like restaurant ; Through deep sand to the store ; Mother, the keys are ; The floating signs along the road ; "Bound together, we matter."