Description
Praise for Mother Land
Refusing to turn away from “the world’s bitter sweetness,” Linda Parsons Marion orders the chaos of a bewildering past in rich, well-tended language. Mother Land “deciphers the earth,” cultivating finally the joy of wise survival, the book itself a garden of recreations.
—Claudia Emerson
The energy of these poems, the sheer bravery of their vision will take your breath away, to say nothing of the remarkable “vinegar, cast iron, flame” of a child’s love and a woman’s disappointment, all of it settling so “gritty on the tongue.” Yet nothing spiteful spoils Linda Parsons Marion’s message. Even the most bitter of these poems ranging over her native and much-loved Tennessee Cumberlands choose the joy and the health of life, choose freedom, and the grace to get us there. She makes me glad.
—Heather Ross Miller
In these haunting poems Linda Parsons Marion digs deep into the family soil of her childhood, into the compost of memory, heartbreak, divorce and affection, and comes up with cutting shards of refuse, pain, conflicted loyalties, that in the alchemy of her voice and art are transformed into song, as the inner landscape, the mother wars, the mystery of a life, become the courage and witness, the mystery and forgiveness of poetry.
—Robert Morgan
“I dig to weed out, / reveal what remains of my early uprooting,” Linda Parsons Marion tells us in this wondrous collection. The poems in Mother Land are often heartbreaking, but the heartbreak is transcended by acceptance and forgiveness and, ultimately, a hardearned wisdom rendered in beautiful language. I have admired Linda Marion’s poetry for many years, and this book is a stunning confirmation of her talent.
—Ron Rash
