While we might think that being a speck on a speck is some mere thing, Elizabeth Coleman's poems remind us again and again that each being implicates all others. Here every hip, urban moment is in essential conversation with the past. With a remarkable eye for the tiniest, most salient details-the way the polished tip of a blind man's cane recalls a mother's painted nails and red lipstick-and a rare poetic ear for recalled and overheard conversation, this poet's newest collection, "The Fifth Generation," contends with what it means to truly belong, as the concentric rings of our commingled existence ripple outward. This is a book of the most tender intimacies, one in which the speaker reminds us that we are not only members of families but also the bound residents of cities, farms, cultures, histories, and nations, that each of us must finally see as home the whole peaceable kingdom.
Kathleen Graber