Looking for the parade

the long version

Looking for the Parade amply demonstrates why Joyce Carol Oates has called Joan Murray "one of our most gifted younger poets." In this forceful collection, Murray observes the character of the passing century and some of the lives that have been part of it: the struggle of a woman against drought in South Africa; the death of a soldier on the march to Bataan. The narrator of these poems then turns inward - she examines what she's become: an artist at ease with her imaginative life, as well as a woman grown wise enough to see that most of her life lies behind her. In the last section, Murray stares at death as it coils inside a cage and celebrates the courage that allows us to be its graceful opponents. In Looking for the Parade, Murray establishes herself as one of our most moving and dramatic poets.