Motion Against Our Moorings

In the title poem of Motion Against Our Moorings, Joseph Powell writes, "Love is the rope stretching into the invisible.//How deeply we believe in the thinnest tethers./What's spirit but motion against our moorings." These poems consider love's intricacies, intimacies, its loss and return. They echo Frost's notion "Earth's the place for love" and capture its ethereal mysteries with compassion, humor, and respect. A line from "Prayer" shows the collection's impact; the poems "relight that candle in the dark window of yourself."

-Kevin Miller, author of Spring Meditation

Joseph Powell begins in childhood; he closes, blessing those gone from us. In between, his precise diction, rhyme, half-rhyme, and an ear for sound guide us through love, pain, and the humdrum daily. Powell explores the heart's readiness despite its being "snagged and torn." After a lover's fight, the offer of basil seed is forgiveness. "Words [. . .] miraculously made visible" lead us through aging, guys at the bar, rodeo, music, hunting-his poems to his mother, losing her memory, touching deeply.

-Alice Derry, author of Asking