Various Modes of Departure: Kore Press First Book Award Winner for 2003

As the title portends, the poems in this debut collection are mostly about the many good-byes said in any given life—to a marriage, a familiar home in a long-beloved locale, an elderly father, a threatened landscape—and despite varied subjects and lighter emotions conveyed at times, there is a seriousness in the poems that permits self-reflection. Memories and imagined fears or familial changes are fleshed out through geography, current and culturally-relevant happenings, brands, and expert knowledge of earth science and botany in poems that are at all times highly sensory and delightful.