Tour of the Breath Gallery: Poems

In her first volume of poetry, novelist Sarah Strong celebrates silence and what can be learned when we wait and listen. In this stillness, she shows us, we may hear answers to questions we have learned not to ask. Exploring how our subtlest gestures speak our most passionate concerns, she maps the intricacies of body—the fingers of a hand, the work of breathing—with the same dexterity she investigates what inspires a mother to demolish a kitchen wall or a lover to change genders. Strong also examines spiritual experience—in Buddhist practice, in re-imagined biblical narratives, and in the details of daily life. Formally alert and often funny, Tour of the Breath Gallery relies on the music of everyday speech as it charts the interplay of the domestic and the sublime with a wise and generous grace.