The Local World, Poems by Joanne Rocky Delaplaine

In this collection, the entire world is local, and the local opens up into the entire world.

Sample Poems by Joanne Rocky Delaplaine

"In Joanne Rocky Delaplaine's The Local World, the close-at-hand and the unreachably far occupy a single space in the modern imagination. but locality is not merely a physical space here-the familiar and the foreign can be traversed in dreams, concomitant sounds, association, and myth. In 'My Analyst's Coat,' the coat holds 'the whole long length' of our guide through these unconscious worlds, the Russia of the analyst's heritage, but also the speaker's old flames, or a sculpture made of gold foil, or the barrette of Emily Dickinson. Poetry is a coat like that, close and conforming and yet bearing the evidence of distances. Delaplaine is the brilliant scout through these neighborhoods and emotional landscapes of attachment and grief, this holding on and letting go. I love her book; I love its pure voice and vision; I love its resounding yes to seeing what is here."-David Keplinger

"The Local World rewards the reader with its close attention to grackles, horseshoe crabs, fiddler crabs, and the magnificent letter o. And although this is primarily a book of elegies, its theme is not loss, but wonder at what remains-the continuing influence of friends, and the heroes who have taken root as well: a cast as diverse as Persephone, Whitman, Borges, Kahlo, and Woolf. The Local World is a treasure box."-Kim Roberts

"Seeing Joanne Rocky Delaplaine's work altogether one realizes how good a writer, flat out, she is. I'm talking about the sentence-making as well as the focus and movement from place to place within poems. This is a really fine piece of work-it has heft and resonance."-Stanley Plumly

"In Joanne Rocky Delaplaine's luminous first collection, the local world is as familiar as a child's first efforts to read, as exotic as a train full of Russian women reciting poetry on their way to a prison camp. A poet with a wide-awake eye and a warm, empathetic voice, Delaplaine draws her world close."-Susan Okie, M.D., author Let You Fly

"The Local World becomes vast and mysterious, ever changing and renewable under the tender care of poet Joanne Rocky Delaplaine. In these poems, origins are uncovered, families travel dangerous roads, a daughter is born into the love cry of o, a hurricane leaves a scent in its wake. The Local World guides us to every day treasures that become animated through the vision of a gifted poet." -Judy bowles, author The Gatherer

ISBN: 978-1625493262, 102 pages

Order from Amazon

Order from Barnes and Noble