Practicing For Heaven

the long version

Poetry. Winner of the 1998 Anhinga Prize for Poetry. Stranded in that clockless month of her arrival,/ I listen to our neighbor sawing down back doors,/ rock her, tiny fists of breath uncurling,/ while the details of each afternoon are revealed. This is a luminous, breath-stopping book. Each poem is complete, each renders an intense encounter between the poet and what she loves: the 'sensate world' in all its complexity of color, contour, and human emotion . . . . The eye makes us look while the words impel us toward feeling something of the poet's present — a present charged with memories, hopes, and a sensitivity like that of the fontanelle: the soft spot on a baby's head invoked in one of the most striking poems in this brilliant first book — Margaret W. Ferguson.