This Rocking Motion of Time

Yvonne Pearson's poems in This Rocking Motion of Time are deeply incarnational. These fearless lyrics exult and grieve for what the body undergoes in its passage through youth, through love and age. They form a gorgeous, sensual testament to being mortal, to being here, and to knowing this will not always be so.

-Susan Deborah King, Poet, Moon Dance, Dropping Into the Flower, One-Breasted Woman, Coven, Tabernacle (Poems of an Island)

In this beautiful collection of poems, Yvonne Pearson casts a panoramic look at her life and asks, "How do we live with/this rocking motion of time?" This question informs all the book's poems, poems about a childhood in Northern Minnesota, about raising children, about a long marriage. With rich imagery and quiet lyricism, the poems articulate the joys and complications of daily life. An open curiosity and generosity inform the collection, exploring the mysteries of time and the meaning one might make of a life. And while the central question Pearson asks is unanswerable, the book's final poem suggests an understanding born of experience: "I cannot choose what comes in/The darkened line, the shadow/enters with the light? So be it." Shadow and light; joy and sorrow; birth and death-all of these make up the rocking motion of time, and Pearson, in the last words of the collection, welcomes them in.

-Cullen Bailey Burns, Poet, Paper Boat, Slip