Angular Embrace

Author: Sylvia Cavanaugh  Publisher: Kelsay Books (2018) "Sylvia Cavanaugh’s angular embrace includes Celtic knots and Molly Maguires, gravy made from caramelized scraps, spice cake 'tasting of . . . butterscotch radiance,' ironed button-down shirts and mothers in aprons, roller skates tightened by silver keys, rusted barbed wire fences and Black-eyed Susans, the Blue Ridge Mountains . . . In other words, she embraces the world and everything in it, and your life will be all the richer for reading these poems." –Barbara Crooker "Vividly conjuring both place and time—Pennsylvania in the 1960s and 70s—Angular Embrace assembles a cast of characters both mythically familiar and piercingly unique. 'Wilderness and domesticity wrestle' in these clear-eyed and haunting poems about the often hardscrabble life of an Irish-American family. This is a collection full of arresting glimpses of the past—small, intimate epiphanies that point to a larger tale about the multifarious costs of the industry