The Forgiveness Dream

The Forgiveness Dream reimagines Sophocles’ Antigone in a series of finely-etched dramatic monologues. These ancient soliloquies speak to current crises: questions of rupture and repair, displacement and migration, war, justice, and fracture. Intimate themes and concerns about fathers and daughters, loss, grief, and memory weave throughout the persona poems in Lee Peterson’s arresting third chapbook.

While the heroine Antigone is the book’s central figure, male characters figure prominently, as do questions of male authority and the wounds men carry, heal, inflict, rise to meet, and sink beneath. Surrounding Antigone’s story are personal, contemporary lyrics that wrestle with loss and wonder what is left when home has no name.