Blacksnake at the Family Reunion: Poems (Southern Messenger Poets)

David Huddle's latest collection, Blacksnake at the Family Reunion, shares intimate and amusing stories as if told by a quirky, usually reticent, great uncle. In ''Boy Story,'' a teenage romantic meeting ends abruptly when the boy's sweetheart realizes they have parked near her grandmother's grave. The poem ''Aloft'' recalls a widowed mother's indignation after she receives a marriage proposal in a hot air balloon. Haunted by the words on his older sister's tombstone--''born & died . . . then / a single date / in November''--the speaker in one poem struggles to understand a tragic loss: ''The ampersand / tells the whole truth / and nothing but, / so help me God, / whose divine shrug / is expressed so / eloquently / by that grave mark.''

Blacksnake at the Family Reunion continues Huddle's ongoing poetic inquiry into the power of early childhood and family to infuse adulthood with sadness and despair an inquiry conducted with profound empathy for the fragility of humankind.