Work Is Love Made Visible

Jeanetta
Calhoun Mish

it has taken my garden to remind me
how intimately life lies with death
the gold sacks of bone meal and
blood meal
the shocking charnel house stink of
hydrated lime
every square foot of loamy soil amended
by decay
yet for five generations my family’s
strong hands
have crumbled red dirt clods, sown
precious seeds,
and pulled weeds until our fingers ached
our palms callous to match the rake
and hoe
we invest ourselves in the bones and
the blood,
and wring life from the ashes and dust

— “ashes and dust”

Both homespun and sophisticated, this book of poems and family memories carries a bite: the author is an Oklahoma woman with a history of hard traveling and a feminist intellectual with a formidable critical vocabulary. She writes in a language of solidarity, affirmation, and love.

The story of the daughter who left home, traveled the country, and returned to do her family proud is still worth telling: add to that the heartbreak, lustiness, traditional wisdom, Okie determination, and Indian legacy of these poems and you have quite a bundle.

The historic family photographs are breathtaking in their own right: beyond any job of archaeology, they speak the world they portray.

5½ x 8½ inches • 72 pages • ISBN 978-0-9816693-3-5 • $12.95