Small fires : essays / Julie Marie Wade.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wade, Julie Marie.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

174 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Louisville, Ky. : Sarabande Books, [2011]

Summary:

This is a daughter's story. In Small Fires, Julie Marie Wade recreates the landscape of her childhood with a lacemaker's care, then turns that precise attention on herself. There are floating tea lights in the bath, coddled blossoms in the garden, and a mother straddling her teenage daughter's back, astringent in hand, to better scrub her not-quite-presentable pores. And throughout, Wade traces this lost world with the same devotion as her mother among her award-winning roses. Small Fires is essay as elegy, but it is also essay as parsing, reconciliation, and celebration, all in the attempt to answer the question--what have you given up in order to become who you are?

Contents:

Keepsake

Triptych of my grandmother : a still life with three fruits

Three keys

Triptych of my mother, thwarted thespian, auditioning for the part of her life

Skin

Bone

Four eyes in a dark room

Triptych of my aunt Linda, poet in her own right, frightened of bicycles

Meditation 29

Traveling

Triptych of my father, George Bailey in another life

The flower of afterthought.

ISBN:

9781936747023

1936747022

OCLC:

703871337