One Body

One Body is Margaret Gibson’s most intimate collection of poems to date. Written as if to honor the injunction “Work to simplify the heart,” the poems are direct, empathetic, and tender in their study of life and death. The thirteen poems of the opening sequence, as well as other poems throughout, look steadily at life and death until they are transparently “one body.” “Closer to death,” she writes, “I want great faith and great doubt.” Whether the focus is personal or social, Gibson has wr...