The Lost Thing

Cynthia Linville s new book, The Lost Thing, is an eloquent testimony to love, mostly love lost but also an unquenchable affirmation of life. The honesty with which she views life is manifest in these words: "even the sweetest of pilgrimage shatters/ under too much light. She is not afraid to expose the intensity of her varied life under this light." Nature is an integral part of many poems: the forbidden plum, the bees at Joshua Tree National Park, or Duncan's Landing that is a briny repository of secrets. There is also the strangler vine that destroys her grandparents home. In her last poem, "I am Fortune's ungraceful daughter," she asks that time be returned back to her. "Return it to me," she says, words that echo in the heart for many of us, and this book of poems is one to which you will want to return. Allegra Jostad Silberstein Poet Laureate for the city of Davis, CA