by Jillian Barnet (Author)
Falling Bodies, a chapbook of poems from Finishing Line Press, explores loss, identity, and family through the lens of the natural world. The book, part of Finishing Line's acclaimed Chapbook Series, is by Finger Lakes area author, Jillian Barnet, whose poems speak to universal issues, but are born of the author's particular experience as an adoptee, mother, and lover in he landscape of her former home in Western Pennsylvania.
From the self as a Roman ruin to God as a big-handed homeboy, from Copernican systems to the doubt and lust of Darwin's wife, the poet's imagination is as far-reaching as her gaze is unflinching. The poems "shudder, dither / in the risen wind against savage blue." Using sensuous images of the natural world, the poet explores "the portage of grief," "the coming / to pass of the past, its inevitable laying hold."
Barnet's poetry has appeared in North American Review, Crab Orchard Review, Image, and elsewhere. Her poem, "Egg," which is featured in Falling Bodies, was nominated by Bellingham Review for a Pushcart Prize.