Household Gods

Household Gods, Bonnie Proudfoot's riveting first collection of poems, uses the lens of the speaker's life to explore both personal and universal questions: How are we shaped by place, by family, by our particular time on this earth? What is our responsibility to witness and to act? It will be no surprise to readers of Proudfoot's novel, Goshen Road, to find that setting plays a central role in these poems. This time, though, the primary setting is the poet's first place; we inhabit the apartments, streets, even rooftops of Queens, NY, alongside the people, many long dead, who occupy them. "