Questions About Home

Questions About Home includes new poems and some of Cynthia's previously published poems such as her Pushcart Prize-nominated "Come Morning" (published in Pirene's Fountain and First Water: Best of Pirene's Fountain), "Maine, Orion" (published in Harbor Journal) and her poem from Yankee, "When Even the Inanimate Seems to Rise and Fall with Breath.

Central to the themes that thread through these poems are life in rural Maine, relationships with family and nature as well as poems after or honoring other writers including Maine's current Poet Laureate Wesley McNair (with "Poet Laureate"), former Maine Poet Laureate Baron Wormser (with "Stolen Pears") and poet Tom Hennen (with "These Perfect Days").




"This collection is really a love poem to Maine. And as with any object of love or desire, Cynthia Brackett-Vincent fleshes it out with an astute poetic flourish of close detail, an intimate and intuitive grasp of nature, and as a veteran of life with well-earned insight."




-Doug Holder, founder of Ibbetson Street Press and Professor of Creative Writing at Endicott College




"What a delight to enter the world of Cynthia Brackett-Vincent's Questions About Home and to discover a clarity and crisp delight like fresh snow in first light or a globe of ice making jewel of dry seed. The surprise of words, well-chosen, selected with love and precision, here takes on the natural history of our landscapes and the every day, the extremities of our lives and loves. This is a volume to be read and re-read, experiencing how common life can be cherished and preserved by language."




-Carol Hamilton, former Poet Laureate of Oklahoma




"The silver thread of the sacred runs through these poems; under Cynthia's loving eye and luminous pen, the Maine woods are cathedral, and above, the constellations whirl in profound and holy silence. The poet's gratitude and humility draw the reader into fellowship with "all the other hungry animals on the road"; these poems fit beautifully into a unity which expresses the ultimate unity of all living things-in the poet's world, "the grasses will genuflect." It is a world you will want to linger in."




-Nancy A. Henry, author of Our Lady of Let's All Sing and Who You Are (Sheltering Pines Press).