Course

Poetry. In COURSE, Kildegaard traces the course of her mother's life and death, and of her own grief. At the same time, it follows the course of the river where her mother's ashes were placed.





"The poems in Athena Kildegaard's COURSE contain multitudes: garter snakes, bats, herons, wild rhubarb, 'the thousand / reed-hidden / black-birds.' But their central concern surrounds the complex life and death of a mother, and attendant mourning for her. Trust and doubt coexist in these pages, and the natural world offers solace but never complete reassurance: 'How vain to seek certainty,' Kildegaard writes. Indeed, the book ends with a poem comprised of spacious questions. As readers, we are caught in the current of this marvelous book, which is as honest and deep-flowing and eternal as the river that passes through its pages."
-- Connie Wanek