Rock Candy

These narrative and lyric poems describe the contours of life in a Pacific Northwest logging town and the bittersweetness that grows there. They also convey the polyvocal experience of growing up in a multigenerational family, with voices from the past joining those of the present.

The first section, "Miserywhip Years," refers to the long handheld saw used by two people to cut down large trees and consists of stories of the logging camps told by the poet's relatives. Another section, "Country Kids," describes growing up in the same place in the 1970s and '80s, including stories of schooling, punished love, and the promise of Armageddon. A long poem, "Elegy for Chastity," memorializes the life and death of the poet's grade-school friend. Later poems, reflective, sometimes joyous but often painful, include contemporary narratives of love, lust, loss, and survival within and beyond the cultural geography of the Pacific Northwest.