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.
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