Yonder

Kate Cumiskey's Yonder is a book of poems which links the lovely island at New Smyrna Beach with Cumiskey's experiences, there. The poems move through space and time taking the reader gently by the hand: one meets a rocket scientist and gazes with him at the wonders of the Universe, humbled at the grace of a benevolent Creator; a boy who uses sweltering summer days to chart the paths of American birds; a mad young girl who wishes only for simple geometry; a Southern gentleman who takes a taxi from Atlanta to Florida. The characters are rich, specific, sharp, fallible. These poems reach the reader by accessing elements we all share-fear, love, failure, triumph. The poet puts her community on the page. There are poems to her mentors, her family, poets she studied with. Found poems, imagined perspectives from the modern to the ancient: one poem in three parts explores, first person, the hearts of Biblical matriarch Naomi and each of her daughters-in-law, another enters the mind of a woman with Alzheimer's forgotten, in wheel chair, at a nursing home. Cumiskey also deals, baldly and from her singular perspective, with issues such as spousal abuse and sexism in modern society. While many poems move back through time to a childhood closely connected to the littoral zone in which the poet grew up, the lyric itself is informed by her early training-both eye and ear-in the traditions of her parents' deep Southern roots. Cumiskey learned to read from the King James Bible and the Broadman Hymnal, and the melody of the poems is steeped in that tradition. The ghosts of grandparents she never knew give the book its name; her father behaved as if they were living, close, and just out of sight for most of his life; he lost them before his eighth birthday. These poems sing with nostalgia, longing, and a deep appreciation for the richness and fallibility of the human heart.