Inheritance

"The arts of remembering in Margaret Kaufman's Inheritance are as various as the tones of voice available to her as a poet. Her voice can be political, and it can be sensual portraiture. But always, she will show us that a `memory of that joyous dancing burns.' There is a heartbreak in this book, and there is high drama. I love such moments in Kaufman's work, when memory is at its most cinematic. But there is more than just cinematics in this book, for `memory smolders too,' she tells us. That moment when a poet stops, in the middle of images, looking for a word, is wisdom: `Somewhere my father is dying,/but I am in a room with lemon light.' I love it, too, when Kaufman notes our strangeness of being, when `denial and delight' come together on the page, and `all her words are aviary.'" Ilya Kaminsky, author of Dancing in Odesssa

"In these illuminating poems, Margaret Kaufman, a gifted, lyrical story-teller, examines the complex emotional fabric of a family, moving effortlessly between decades to weave together the grief and joy, loss and abundance, promise and peril that comprise a life. As the `years conflate, collapse,' she defines what it means not only to reflect on the breadth of one's experience with truth and grace but also to embrace the small, pivotal moments that, if attended to, have the power to transform us." Francine Sterle, author of Nude in Winter