Heron Cliff

In Heron Cliff, Margo Button, like all of us, is uprooted by the unique travels of an individual life. From the title poem about the giving up of a beloved home where a son had taken his own life, to poems about her own childhood and interconnectedness to the ever-lengthening branches of the family tree from grandparents to grandchildren, to poems about the larger upheavals and passions of the world -- the lingering effects of the Great Depression, Europe during the Cold War, Guatemala and Beirut in the 1970s, and 9/11 -- to "Blue Dahlias," which, in its fifty-nine wide-ranging and unpredictable, yet coherent and focussed, ghazal-like sections, evokes in ecstatic detail the new home, gardens, and ideas where she has come to settle, Button articulates a vision of life where the darkest grief has a place alongside the most profound joy. In Heron Cliff, the heart moves house and finds a home once more in the world. For both the consummate skill of the writing and the depth of passion expressed, Margo Button's fourth book of poetry is a remarkable achievement.