In an age when personal poetry struggles to be heard over the noise of its narcissistic imposters, Liza Hyatt’s voice cuts through clean and clear at a frequency that delights the listener with discovery. These poems, each a step in her endless journey under a 50-pound backpack of rattling love, are the priceless property of the writer and her late, difficult, captivating mother. Yet they demonstrate once again the power of Hyatt’s mind and music to extend intimacy to all of us. —Dan Carpenter, editorial page columnist, poet, author of More Than I Could See and Hard Pieces: Dan Carpenter’s Indiana Liza Hyatt is lucky to have learned from her mother the word “memory” and the sweet fruit of pear at an early age. Her mother taught her the “imagination is essential, healing and ancient,” and that is exactly what Hyatt does for us as we voyage in her boat with white sails to her world of childhood, vivid with bright and dark gems, fed by a strong mother love, nurturing her (as the pear) and sometimes not. Hyatt reveals to us how she accepts their relationship and moves forward, as we all must do to be fully on our own. This brave and honest collection urges us toward compassion for that wild and varied dance of all children and their mothers. —Bonnie Maurer, MFA, author of The Reconfigured Goddess: Poems of a Breast Cancer Survivor and Reconfigured
