Home Front

In HOME FRONT, Leigh Herrick's first of two collections written during the beginning decade of the New Millennium, we are offered a landscape honed in scope and hauntingly beautiful, as the poet covers a global ground, communicating the immediacy of social and environmental concerns. As Scott Helmes has written of HOME FRONT, we are reminded that poetry can be relevant, and Herrick affirms that relevance through language's power and endurance. Largely written after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, and leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Herrick's work here serves in the best tradition of engaged poetry, where is found a compendium of images and voices reflecting not just moments of personal hope and love, but those of troubled times in a troubled country, a troubled world, and on a planet in crisis. Often drawing on her developed sense of linguistic rhythm, Herrick's HOME FRONT blends the abstract with the traditional, leading Sheila E. Murphy to write, "I have seldom read work that so intrinsically honors both tradition and innovation in the art of poetry. This volume is profoundly important."