Other Times, Midnight

In Other Times, Midnight, her debut collection, Andrea Ballou explores the aftermath of loss-death, divorce, and departures-and asks the toughest questions: how do we contend with grief and remorse, and where does the spirit go to wait out trauma? Ballou's poems fight an "impulse to not speak," aware that naming, and speech itself, are a matter of life and death. Their startling and often humorous images (rooted in the fields, forests, and domesticity of rural life) are juxtaposed with oblique, at times irreverent, adaptations of Celtic and Greek myth and biblical stories. For Ballou, language is both tool and weapon, as useful as a hoe, needle, and sword. Caught "in the mouth of midnight," these poems wrestle with the numinous, their voices-cranky and cajoling, yet compassionate and vulnerable-urging us toward the fullness of being human.