Overview

Priscilla Long's nimble verse examines the difference between provenance and improvisation in how we grow up-or, to use the language of one Eastern Shore of Maryland family, how we ""grow away."" This portrait-in-poems' entrance into adulthood is graceful and sonically compelling: ""I pull red cellophane, / open the pack, shake one out, / strike a match to flare and whiff of sulfur"" (from the poem ""Greyhound""). Cartographies of Home is a soulful, erudite, and ultimately playful look at life in flight. -Sandra Beasley, author of Made to Explode: Poems In Cartographies of Home, Priscilla Long maps memory and longing through poems of lyric tenderness: ""Look for me in the sun-struck afternoon / this rainstorm can't remember."" Whether in ""Childhood's slow river / slid snake-bellied / down its mud-bed"" or in a life of ""simple things: / guacamole and toast,"" these poems remind us that home and history are not nostalgia, but quiet witness-and very much worth our time. -Kelli Russell Agodon, author of Accidental Devotions In Cartographies of Home, the self and setting often melt into each other. In one poem, the speaker is ""the river's wet-eyed girl."" In another, ""the moon [is] yellow as pigtails."" A childhood when anger was ""common as dirt"" is recalled and reclaimed. Priscilla Long delves into not only the pain of the distant past but recent personal losses as well by charting her ""own atlas."" Most of the poems are slight but complex, almost epigrammatic with their epiphanies. This is particularly apt since the reader will find a celebration of simple living and pleasures in the shorter poems. -Allen Braden, author of A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood

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Reviews

Priscilla Long's nimble verse examines the difference between provenance and improvisation in how we grow up-or, to use the language of one Eastern Shore of Maryland family, how we ""grow away."" This portrait-in-poems' entrance into adulthood is graceful and sonically compelling: ""I pull red cellophane, / open the pack, shake one out, / strike a match to flare and whiff of sulfur"" (from the poem ""Greyhound""). Cartographies of Home is a soulful, erudite, and ultimately playful look at life in flight. -Sandra Beasley, author of Made to Explode: Poems In Cartographies of Home, Priscilla Long maps memory and longing through poems of lyric tenderness: ""Look for me in the sun-struck afternoon / this rainstorm can't remember."" Whether in ""Childhood's slow river / slid snake-bellied / down its mud-bed"" or in a life of ""simple things: / guacamole and toast,"" these poems remind us that home and history are not nostalgia, but quiet witness-and very much worth our time. -Kelli Russell Agodon, author of Accidental Devotions In Cartographies of Home, the self and setting often melt into each other. In one poem, the speaker is ""the river's wet-eyed girl."" In another, ""the moon [is] yellow as pigtails."" A childhood when anger was ""common as dirt"" is recalled and reclaimed. Priscilla Long delves into not only the pain of the distant past but recent personal losses as well by charting her ""own atlas."" Most of the poems are slight but complex, almost epigrammatic with their epiphanies. This is particularly apt since the reader will find a celebration of simple living and pleasures in the shorter poems. -Allen Braden, author of A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood

Author Information

Priscilla Long grew up on a dairy farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. She is a Seattle-based writer, poet, editor, and a longtime independent teacher of writing. She writes science, poetry, history, creative nonfiction, and fiction. She is author of nine books (to date), including the how-to write manual The Writer's Portable Mentor. Her work appears in numerous literary publications, both print and online, and her science column ""Science Frictions"" ran for 92 weeks online at The American Scholar. She has a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from the University of Washington and serves as founding and consulting editor of HistoryLink.org, the free online encyclopedia of Washington state history. Her awards include a National Magazine Award (for feature writing), and ten of her essays have been honored as ""notable"" in various editions of The Best American Essays. A Best of the Net, Pushcart Prize, and National Book Award nominee, Lana Hechtman Ayers won honors in the Discovery / Nation Award and in the Rita Dove Poetry Prize. She was awarded writing residencies from Hedgebrook, Devil's Tower National Park, and The Whiteley Foundation. She is the author of twelve poetry collections and chapbooks, the most recent of which is The Autobiography of Rain (Fernwood Press, 2024). Ayers has shepherded over one hundred fifty poetry titles into print in her role as Managing Editor for three small presses. Originally from New York, she now lives in Oregon where, on quiet nights, she can hear the ocean whispering to the moon.

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