The Boy Who Slept Under the Stars: A Memoir in Poetry

by Roseann Lloyd

Overview

"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 Lloyd has 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), and Tap 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780983325499
Publisher:	Holy Cow! Press
Publication date:	09/18/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	72
File size:	395 KB

About the Author

Roseann Lloyd has previously published eight books, including three collections of her poetry, Because of the Light, (Holy Cow Press, 2003), War Baby Express, (Holy Cow! Press, 1996--awarded the Minnesota Book Award for Poetry, 1997), and Tap Dancing for Big Mom, (New Rivers Press, 1986). The anthology she co-edited with Deborah Keenan, Looking for Home: Women Writing About Exile, (Milkweed Editions, 1990) was awarded an American Book Award in 1991. She's written nonfiction for Harper/Hazelden, translated a book from Norwegian for Seal Press. Her awards include an Artists' Fellowship from the Bush Foundation, a Fellowship at Civitella Ranieri, in Umbertide, Italy, and grants from the Loft McKnight and Jerome Foundation. Lloyd's new book was completed with help from an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board (2011).

Some new poems/prose poems appear in Askew (#5), Water-Stone Review Volume 10, So to Speak (Winter/Spring 2009) and Eating the Pure Light: Homage to Thomas McGrath (Backwaters Press, 2009), Pemmican, 2010, tattoo highway / Dust and Fire (2010), and others. She and her husband Jim Smith live in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Table of Contents

Contents

Part One: Circumambulation: Without a Body to Mourn


Neither Here Nor There: What They Said 6
Cold Up North 8
My Brother's Tears 9
First Summers and the Last: The Boy Who Slept Under the Stars 11
Memory: Layers like Mica 13
Lloyd Lloyd 14
Messing Around in Boats 16
But Were You Mad? 17
Autumnal 18
What It Was Like Today: November 13, 2005 19
My Assigned Humans and Myself 22
Mirror: Solstice Sun 22
First Blank Christmas 27
Winter Solstice 28
Touchy about His Feet 29
In My Poems Since You Left Us 30
Walking the Ice Age Trail the First Spring After 31
April, Baby 32
Father 37
A Small Change in the Map: On the Trail to Whisky Jack Lake 38

Part Two: Echolocation: Three Degrees of Grief

21st Century Communion 41
Three Friends at True Thai, Discussing the Phrase You'll Never Get over It 42
The Family of Frederico García Lorca Stands against the Exhumation of
His Remains 43
Missing Student Found in River 44
Grade School Principal and His Wife Take the Visiting Poet to the Best
Restaurant in Town 45
Still Missing: 500,000 46
Heartland M.I.A. 47
Love, Salvage 49
Who's Missing on Mt. Everest? 50

Part Three: Navigation: Standing Still


The Labyrinth, Winter Solstice 53
Have Drum Will Journey 54
Leaving the New Book on Grief 56

Epilogue
Walking the Trail to Angleworm Lake, Six Years After He Died 58

Notes on the Poems 60
Notes on the Boundary Waters 61