Psalm

the long version

Psalm affirms what's most essential to ordinary life and to artistic expression: the fact that one is permitted to walk the earth and partake of its wonders. Psalm searches for ways of verifying the world through art and experience. In a narrative arc, Psalm takes the poet from her father's death to her son's birth. In between are all the elements of the imagination: faith, art, music, culture. This world expands to include Vermeer's nuns, Cornell on a bike ride on the Brooklyn promenade and the sound of Django Reinhardt all simultaneous to her son's cries, his presence. The poet moves forward inside and then away from grief. Her lyric poems begin to furnish the afterlife, even as they do the time before birth. Publisher's synopsis.