Walking backward

the long version

"The intense lyrics and harrowing narratives of Walking Backward explore the web of values and obligations that bind people into neighborhoods and nations. In the title poem, a conscience-stricken, middle-aged draft-dodger reflects on the Vietnam era. At the book's center is "Seeing the Elephant," a long narrative by a survivor of the Donner party tragedy. Fusing fact, dream, and fantasy, the poem gives a hallucinatory shimmer to the recollections of Elizabeth Reed Murphy, the story's protagonist. As the poem traces the tangled story of her life from innocent girlhood to wise old age, its shifting movements explore how memory fashions meaning from experience."--BOOK JACKET.