Owning the Moon: Poetry

In her final poetry collection, Linda Sillitoe transformed
ordinary events into thoughtful, funny, and
sharp commentaries on the human condition. A
mother painstakingly alters a dress for a beloved
daughter, and the “cloth and needle weave her daughter’s
dreams.” Later a daughter mourning her father’s
death remembers how “something vital vanished.”
From warning a friend against growing “spoiled
just a bit for ordinary men” to trying to “fit this
time among our dearest and darkest demons” when
moving back to Utah, Sillitoe reveals a world “where
poems hold such power,” and each stanza carries
multiple meanings.
Despite, or perhaps in conjunction with, life’s joy
and sorrow, Sillitoe’s verses reveal an unconventional
spirit determined to transcribe life’s experiences
in a manner that is both accessible and extraordinary,
ending with a promise to continue “scribbling
warranties in the sand. / Over time, we lose what we
own / and learn the motions that bring it back— /
like this moon, as caught, as wild, as we.”