Degrees of Latitude [Paperback]

Laurel Blossom's Degrees of Latitude is a book-length poem, really, divided by section breaks to give air: these are short sections, for the most part, and breezy, this is a book-length narrative that covers family and personal history and moves seamlessly through time and space. [This is] almost a lyric novel, so sweepingly re-imagined is the life it illuminates but it is as well an expedition into territory seldom explored in lyric mode. Blossom begins her journey on an icebreaker during the white nights of a polar northcold as childhoodand then turns her gaze upon the uncharted regions of family history, secrecy and illusion, bravely and with uncommon self-knowledge, in deft and beautifully cadenced language that belies the arduousness of her task. This work crosses, formally and insightfully, the traditional borders of confession and memoir, and moves into the unknown, mapping what is visible as well as what has, until now, been hidden. I have been waiting a long time to read this book, and it is very much worth the wait.

LAUREL BLOSSOM is the author of Wednesday: New and Selected Poems (2004). Earlier books include The Papers Said (1993), What's Wrong (1987), and Any Minute (1979). Blossom is the editor of Splash! Great Writing About Swimming (1996) and Many Lights in Many Windows: Twenty Years of Great Fiction and Poetry from The Writers Community (1997), among others. Blossom has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and Harris Manchester College (Oxford University), where she serves on the Board of Regents. She co-founded the esteemed writing residency and workshop program The Writers Community. She lives in rural South Carolina.