The Boy Who Slept Under the Stars: A Memoir in Poetry

"This a book about that place inside us all where bafflement meets mystery: a strange place, sometimes frightening and sometimes filled with stars and pines, clear flowing water and the deep joy of companionship."—Jim Moore

Roseann Lloyd's new poetry collection takes us on a sister's unflinching exploration into grief for a brother lost on a solo hike in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota. His clothes are found but not his body. How does one mourn without a body? This absence calls up memories of his life and mixed emotions; it evokes other disappearances—children missing in Iraq, climbers lost on Everest, a college student drowned.

Even though I've said, for two years now, I don't need his body
to do my mourning, I'm suddenly desperate
to touch your arms, muscled and tan . . .

Full of verbal energy and rich patterns of sound, Lloyd's lines are allowed to breathe and move about in always interesting forms: prose poems, found poems, section poems, swirling mosaics of time and place. Beautifully crafted, the poems are emotionally complex yet accessible.

Roseann Lloyd has published eight books, including three poetry collections: Because of the Light (Holy Cow! Press), War Baby Express (Holy Cow! Press—awarded the Minnesota Book Award for Poetry), and Tap Dancing for Big Mom (New Rivers Press). The anthology she co-edited with Deborah Keenan, Looking for Home: Women Writing About Exile (Milkweed Editions), was awarded an American Book Award. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.