Love From the Outer Bands

Poetry. Mary Block's poems tell of surviving Miami's hurricanes, creeping vines, and slithering animals, disappearing shorelines and rising waters. Motherhood itself is among what we survive with her, both its trials and the profound love that sustain us in the creation of family, even in the hardest of times.

Says Miami Poet Laureate, Caridad Moro-Gronlier, "Block's debut book of poetry, Love from the Outer Bands is a celebration of motherhood that ditches saccharine verse in favor of clear-eyed poems that belie the trope of the selfless mother. Clearly, these sharp-witted, emotionally resonant poems have a very prominent self who lays bare the weight of motherhood while dispelling the myth of the martyr. Block's expert use of form, structure and prosody presents motherhood as construct, as commentary, as conscience, and as love, in its most concrete form. These are not sentimental poems, yet they provide succor and sustenance, the sort of lullaby everyone needs."