When I Got Drunk with My Mother

"A writer should strive to be a person on whom nothing is lost." So said Henry James. Shelley Townsend-Hudson's wonderful collection of poetry, When I Got Drunk with My Mother, surely bears out James's dictum. Her book vividly records the ordinary images and moments of her family's life-including her own journey from childhood through girlhood to womanhood-and illuminates them transcendently with a true poet's gift. Indeed, "Pinning down the sum of who we were" is her art.

-Arnold Johnston, ...