Owning the Moon
Owning the Moon
Linda Sillitoe
In her final poetry collection, Linda Sillitoe transforms ordinary events into thoughtful, funny, and sharp commentaries on the human condition. A mother painstakingly alters a dress for a beloved daughter, and the “cloth and needle weave her daughter’s dreams.” Later a daughter mourning her father’s death remembers how “something vital vanished.”
From warning a friend against growing “spoiled just a bit for ordinary men” to trying to “fit this time among our dearest and darkest demons” after moving back to Utah, Sillitoe reveals a world “where poems hold such power,” and each stanza carries multiple meanings.
Despite, or perhaps in conjunction with, life’s joy and sorrow, Sillitoe’s verses reveal an unconventional spirit determined to transcribe life’s experiences in a manner that is both accessible and extraordinary, ending with a promise to continue “scribbling warranties in the sand./Over time, we lose what we own/ and learn the motions that bring it back—/like this moon, as caught, as wild, as we.”
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Until her death in 2010, Linda Sillitoe wrote as a voice for Utahns, Mormons, and anyone in possession of a curious spirit. Her work received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Associated Press, as well as three Pulitzer nominations. With Allen Roberts, she co-authored the best-selling Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders. In addition, she taught writing classes, worked for many years as a news reporter for the Deseret News and Utah Holiday Magazine, co-produced the PBS documentary Native and American, and raised three children.
Poetry
ISBN: 978-1-56085-266-7
