Poetry. The pieces that make up KIBBE document a life spent journeying "Between Two Worlds": the author's America and the Lebanon of her family heritage. In Porterfield's vision, people and places long departed can be conjured back through memory and language; "the land of the father is remembered / by the child." That language cannot perform its function unless it can consider honestly and unapologetically the political, social, and spiritual rifts that seem to divide real people. We recognize the people in these poems even when they are distant from our homes and our minds: the fathers and mothers, the dictators, even the stranger driving the taxi through Beirut. Thanks to Porterfield's healing art, we find ourselves with them in the end, in a shared space where reconciliation and compassion are our only options.

Author City: DE KALB, IL USA

Susan Azar Porterfield was born in Chicago and is currently a Professor of English at Rockford College. She has studied and taught in London, and has taught as well in Lebanon. She edited Zen, Poetry, the Art of Lucien Stryk (Ohio University Press, 1994) and has published several articles on Stryk's work, including a profile of him for Poets and Writers magazine.