Crossing Over: Poems

By Priscilla Long

University of New Mexico Press, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-8263-2396-5

Available from the usual online booksellers—try Bookshop.org—or your local independent bookstore.

Booksellers – University of New Mexico Press

Long’s work begs to be read aloud in order to savor the rich language and rhythm she instills in each poem. She explores the beauty of specific bridges while employing them as a metaphor for crossings to death (a sister’s suicide), eros, and art. Part elegy, the book also explores living, remembering, and celebrating.

“The sounds of Priscilla Long’s poems take their place in creation, so lush the vowels, so euphonious her rhymes, so full her catalogues, so keen her grief and boldness, so brave her confrontation of love and loss and death and the solace of crow and bone and language. This book begs to be read out loud, sings for its supper, and offers us comfort as a gift.”–Hilda Raz, Mary Burritt Christiansen Poetry Editor

“Memory is a bridge, poet Priscilla Long reminds us in this shimmering, elegantly structured collection: these poems lead back to the bright sources of longing and grief, guided by Long’s excellent and playful ear, passion for language, and spine-tingling insights. Crossing Over interlaces elegies–including a gorgeous series for a lost sister–with remembered love, human tragedy, dreamy sensation, moody northwestern landscapes, and bridges–real and metaphorical. The joy of creation leavens every poem. I have long anticipated this book: it was so worth the wait.”–Kathleen Flenniken, author of Plume: Poems

“This is a poet obsessed with bridges and crossings, as the title of the collection implies: chaos to order; grief to acceptance; solitude to connection; confusion to understanding; life to death; past to present; dark to light–themes as old as poetry.”–Samuel Green, author of All That Might Be Done[/bscolumns]