Living on the Flood Plain

"In this carefully structured collection, James A. Zoller presents several tightly woven sequences of interlocking poems. Many of these pieces are attuned to the turning of seasons--the river's rise and fall, freeze and thaw. Such closely observed depictions of nature reflect the poet's spiritual sensibilities in a way that seems reminiscent of Thoreau. While often introspective, they move seamlessly between the personal and the universal: reading the landscape for traces of the past, what could be simply erased if the river should rise, reckoning what is at stake with the loss of a parent, spouse, or child. "The landscape he finds harbors memories that remind us of our deepest bonds to one another--'remind us just who we are'--and the emotions that ultimately mean most. We reenter our lives at moments overwhelmed by what we have learned to recognize as mercy: 'how/ God so casually and deliberately, with such prodigious and exacting care,/ graces the homely, the feeble, the disrepaired.' These meditations on landscape and loss ultimately offer a form of redemption as 'All become[s] testimony . . . [to] our letting go.'" --Christian Knoeller, winner of the 2007 Midwestern Heritage Prize and author of Completing the Circle.