Clocks We Watch

Mary Copeland dispels the myth still occasionally surfacing in the shallow waters of the ignorant that domestic life is some sort of refuge from the Big Questions rather than what it is: the very battleground where one engages them. In a language and syntax of stunning grace, vitality, nuance, and evocative power, Copeland­-as mother, daughter, lover, and acute observer of the human dilemma-takes us where the best poetry should, to the heart of the mystery of our own being.

B.H. Fairchild, author of The Arrival of the Future, Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest and The Art of the Lathe

Clocks We Watch showcases poems shining with luminous craft, imbued with a grace-haunted sensibility, and brimming with the full range and complexity of human emotion. Whether they're voicing elegies or odes, complaints or meditations, Copeland's poems feel inevitable-their truths realized through her use of a precise language wedded to necessity and insight. There is a plainspoken grandeur in Mary Copeland's achievement here, in her ability to plumb the heart's most profound depths and to reveal with such pathos its myriad mysteries.

Maurya Simon, author of The Enchanted Room and Days of Awe, and Speaking in Tongues, and Cartographies

There is a compelling gravity to Mary Copeland's poems, a weight that pulls us to reflect on our essential humanity and to try and puzzle out a meaning and a metaphysical vision that might lie beyond. All of these important considerations are rendered in accessible and expertly crafted lines and images that arise out of the everyday commerce of our experience. There is a compassion and understanding here. This a mature and fully realized collection of great skill and image.

Christopher Buckley, poet, professor of creative writing, author of Camino Cielo, Dark Matter, and Blue Autumn