Meeting Myself 'Round The Corner

In her second collection of poems, Carol Prejean Zippert continues to explore the intersecting worlds she inhabits as a woman, a wife and mother, an educator, an African American, a Southerner, a community activist, and a writer. Zippert has a rich, musical voice in her poetry, and she is never afraid of her emotions. She lets her readers share her joys as well as her sorrows, her curiosity as well as her certainty.

"I wish I could tell you my fears," she writes, "but the trouble is all in my mind." It's to her credit that she so effortlessly invites us inside this creative mind, which draws insights from topics ranging from the mundane acts of daily life (brewing coffee, raking the yard) to the broad sweep of history (the legacy of Malcolm X, the promised-but-not-delivered forty acres and a mule), to the many faces and expressions of love and faith.

When she writes, "Is she that gift to me, coming into / my home, reminding that the greatest / treasures of our world are still found / in the simplest acts of love?," Zippert is speaking of the bird that has built a nest in her garage, but she might also be describing these poems she has carefully constructed and delivered to her readers.