Publisher's Synopsis
Swimming with Shadows, Ethna McKiernan's fourth collection of poems, returns to her earlier themes of loss-of her youngest son, of her father, and of the pervasive losses of the homeless population with whom she works. This new collection also addresses political wounds of a bygone America-the bombings of school girls in Alabama the 1960's and the racially charged beating of Rodney King in the 1990's-as it presents poems that address the conflicts of today. Interspersed are poems of love, praise and joy like "Thanks" and "Night Time on the Island," poems rooted in the natural world, as well as some wickedly funny poems about the craft of poetry.
