Century's Road (Poems)

“I find myself taken by Patricia Kirkpatrick’s unsentimental tenderness—a mark, I believe, of all good lyric poetry.”—Jane Hirshfield

The poems in Century’s Road travel the “plain public road” of American daily life while glimpsing the humanity of other continents. At the center of the book is the figure of the child as witness, whether newborn or newly immigrated, abandoned or unplanned, learning to read, or telling stories. In a voice combining a clear sense of image and sound, these poems stand in a lyric tradition yet address issues—and mysteries—beyond the personal. The poet pursues the life of the imagination and subjects of birth and death; the natural world; family, community and womanhood; and sometimes touching the legacy of World War II, Vietnam and September 11th.

from Century’s Road:

In the middle of the century, I stood watching
flickering reels of people flee the burning city.
A child stood sobbing at the edge of the road, holding her arms out but
nobody stopped to take her. Nobody stopped. Thundering passage
thundering past. The black and white footage of war. The hard cart of migration over stone.

Patricia Kirkpatrick grew up in Des Moines and graduated from the University of Iowa and San Francisco State University. She has received awards from the NEA, the Bush Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Loft-McKnight and the Jerome Foundation. Her poems have appeared in magazines such as The Antioch Review, Threepenny Review and Luna. Her essays and interviews with American poets have been published in Ruminator/Hungry Mind Review, Speakeasy and Riverbank Review. She teaches in the MFA program at Hamline University, and has also taught and conducted workshops at Macalester College, the Princeton Theological Seminary and the Loft. She lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota with her family.