Product Description
Winner of the sixth annual May Swenson Poetry Award, TheOwl Question underscores and relishes life’s transitions—from younggirl to woman, from child to wife to mother, and from isolation toconnection—this poet’s bright sense of abundance and awe, hereexpressed in finely tuned detail and refreshingly open observation,reads like a collective memory. Though private and closely held, thesequestionings are as familiar as our own souls, and in theirtransformation to poetry, Shearin has created the very "map" shewishes to guide her when she "can’t learn the world fastenough." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Gorgeous Imagery
Absolutely wonderful book of poetry.She captures sentiment without being sentimental.Even non-readers of poetry will enjoy this.

Brief yet evocative verse
Winner of the May Swenson poetry award, The Owl Question by Faith Shearin is a unique collection of brief yet evocative verse, featuring a foreword by Mark Doty (an international poet and the appointed judge for the 2002 May Swenson Award). Examining adolescence, nature, femininity, parenthood, daily life, and more, these inspirational and deftly written verses often carry a down-to-earth, narrative-event tone. My father, in middle age, falls in love with a dog./He who kicked dogs in anger when I was a child,/who liked his comb always on the same shelf,/who drank martinis to make his mind quiet./He who worked and worked/- his shirts/wrapped in plastic, his heart ironed/like a collar./He who - like many men -/ loved his children but thought the money/he made for them was more important/than the rough tweed of his presence.

A Good First Book
Faith Shearin's debut book of poems tells a compelling story. The speaker in these poems begins as a child, becomes a childless wife and ,in a final transformation, finds herself a mother. The book is full of humor and wise observation. She describes her yearning for a child this way: "I hold nothing in my arms. The nothing feels light and heavy at the same time.." The stories these poems weave together are both particular and individual (a mother's untidy kitchen, a father's eccentric love for his dog) and wonderfully universal. ... Read more