The Boy Who Slept Under the Stars A Memoir in Poetry [Paperback]

This a book about that place inside us all where bafflement meets mystery: a strange place, sometimes frightening and sometimes filled with stars and pines, clear flowing water and the deep joy of companionship. —Jim Moore

Roseann Lloyd's new poetry collection takes us on a sister's unflinching exploration into grief for a brother lost on a solo hike in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota. His clothes are found but not his body. How does one mourn without a body? This absence calls up memories of his life and mixed emotions; it evokes other disappearances—children missing in Iraq, climbers lost on Everest, a college student drowned.

Even though I've said, for two years now, I don't need his body
to do my mourning, I'm suddenly desperate
to touch your arms, muscled and tan . . .

Full of verbal energy and rich patterns of sound, Lloyd's lines are allowed to breathe and move about in always interesting forms: prose poems, found poems, section poems, swirling mosaics of time and place. Beautifully crafted, the poems are emotionally complex yet accessible.

Roseann Lloydhas published eight books, including three poetry collections:Because of the Light(Holy Cow! Press),War Baby Express(Holy Cow! Press—awarded the Minnesota Book Award for Poetry), andTap Dancing for Big Mom(New Rivers Press). The anthology she co-edited with Deborah Keenan,Looking for Home: Women Writing About Exile(Milkweed Editions), was awarded an American Book Award. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

This a book about that place inside us all where bafflement meets mystery: a strange place, sometimes frightening and sometimes filled with stars and pines, clear flowing water and the deep joy of companionship. —Jim Moore

Roseann Lloyd's new poetry collection takes us on a sister's unflinching exploration into grief for al“'