Road Scatter

Road Scatter (as in tire-sprayed gravel) is an examination of breakage and survival, compelled by the decline and death of the poet 's mother but engaged, too, by global encounters with the Iraq war, a rabid dog in Africa, and an at-large South American former dictator, for example. Though a book of mourning, it is also one of living, rising from grief, returning light in all directions. --Jane Hirshfield