A Hundred-Year Wind

The sharp bite of nostalgia, the wars we fight against others and against ourselves, and the gentle heartbreaks and joys that sneak up on us with each passing year: these are the ingredients of life, and the heart of A Hundred-Year Wind.

In these pages we encounter Donald, who experiences a fresh slap of isolation when he returns to school after the loss of his family: "By association, / Fate of an ordinary day, / Might go horribly wrong again." And Elva Lea, who "Recalled the long journey / That began in a tiny bungalow scarcely a hundred miles away, / A place where eight people tried to reconstitute a family / And failed." We meet children who turn branches of oak trees into ships on waves of wind, and grandchildren who become "an image on a computer screen talking to a camera."

With profound observations of the turmoil that marks each new generation, these poems become our own, and serve as a reminder of the strength of those who came before us, and of the resilience found in us all.