Holonym is a collection of contemporary poems by award-winning Kentucky poet, Trish Lindsey Jaggers. Holonym, from the title poem, is the relationship of the "whole" that is created by its "parts." (Flower is the holonym of petal, stamen, and pistil; tree is the holonym of trunk, branch, and limb.) It is a "semantic relation"-words, phrases, images, and what they represent-connotations that signal denotation. Several interconnecting themes arise in these poems, among them: loss through war, loss of connectedness and other deficiencies, and discovery of self in seemingly insignificant objects where the objects become the holonym for the self and its missing parts. These poems seek to solemnize loss and recognition in the prodigious (earth's history in stones, fireworks' harkening to war, those small things left in a room to signify a life lived) to the infinitesimal (death of a petal, tiny antiques). Deceptively simple; decidedly complex-all pieces semantic to the "holonym."
