The Boys I Borrow

Poetry. Many of these sensitive, clever poems are about navigating the new waters of a non traditional family. The result is a cohesive, engaging collection in which a real heroine persona explores the often challenging terrain of the omicile –Billy Collins. When you open THE BOYS I BORROW, you won’t find poems about angels or mythological heroines–what you’ll find is life the way we live it, but more clearly seen and deeply understood than the average human can easily bear. The dramas in this book are the dramas of the life lived in the 21st century–we have trips to the fertility doctor, motorcycle rides to the Shangri-la Motel beneath a ‘well hung, low slung’ moon, stepsons whose ‘tongues are simple antennae’ and who play Nintendo, need help with their homework–in short, all of our wonderfully banal and beautiful world rendered in painterly precision and tender humor. This is a book that sustains –Beth Ann Fennelly.