Falling Back, Poems by Carol Gloor

Falling Back is a plain language exploration of who and what we love and care about, whether spouses, birds, water or just someone we see on the subway. The collection succinctly and honestly expresses how those relationships change over time and setting.

Sample Poems by Carol Gloor

"Carol L. Gloor paints the world with a keen eye, seeing for us the riches of what we in the Midwest might call ordinary: dandelions, squirrels, the corner tavern, snow. Weaving through five generations of life and memory, the poems of Falling Back trace lines of kinship from a grandmother the poet never knew to her granddaughter, whose American Girl doll sends echoes to the past. Both mournful and celebratory, this collection lives in the insistent passage of time. Just as her own life has spanned both urban and rural, her poems dive deeply into Chicago's wet winter and journey to smaller towns and the prairie, to Pine Lake, where, swimming, the poet sees above her 'the bowl of the sky/ and the only sound my breath, heartbeat,' and pays homage to less glamorous birds like sparrows, 'dressed only in their brown grey coats from the Salvation Army.' Set from Lake Michigan to central Illinois, with a few forays to lands far away, her poems remind us that we exist always in the layered complexity of near and far, present and past." - Kate Hutchinson, author of Map Making, Poems of Land and Identity.

"These are perceptive poems, heartfelt , but never sentimental, even, or especially, when they address our most intimate emotions: the love of children and parents, of wives and husbands. This collection shows us a landscape in which two worlds co-exist: the urban world that human beings inhabit, and the natural world where animals fight to survive. Throughout, the book reminds us of the old legacy that we all share, of 'how the world goes on.' " - Norman Hane, author of Outliving.

"Carol L. Gloor's collection, Falling Back, covers a broad range of subjects-from rhythms and seasons of the natural world, memory, and aging, to living in Chicago and passion for baseball. All the pieces resonate beautifully and connect us to deeper understanding of ourselves and the universe ('everything carbonizes'). Carol's clear and potent poems are 'clandestine rubies, secret garnets' that leave lingering images and a longing for more." - Jennifer Dotson, author of Clever Gretel.

ISBN: 978-1625492739, 128 pages

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