Cherish the Bone

The poems in this debut volume have been written over many years and introduce a bold, new voice to take note of. In language, lyric and evocative, Sheila Burke celebrates and confronts events we all recognize with special attention to those issues women have faced in the tumultuous 20th century. She extols motherhood and experiments with the new roles of women. She examines mental illness and the disintegration of a marriage. Influenced by Robert Lowell's ground-breaking workshop at Harvard during the late 1950s, she embraces the confessional style made famous by participants, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. She doesn't spare herself or her readers in verse that chronicles her sorrows as well as her joys. Her poems can make you laugh or cry and are not easily forgotten.