Back Apart

Barbara Cully's poems pair a wry, deadpan wit with a tender regard for small things. They take on rock formations, the surreal, the man-made environments we build, and the cruelties people inflict on one another, and they treat beauty through elegy. Shorelines, deserts, and oceans recur as objects of her affection.

The collection moves across a wide field of subjects: soldiers caught in an ambush in Afghanistan, the California coast of the poet's youth, the night of Kristallnacht, and the environmental damage happening now. A restless urge to look at things and then turn away drives the poems, which never settle. Each one keeps reassessing the self as it stands within history, within the landscape, and above all among other people.