June 16th, 1999, in Dublin Ohio and it is Molly and Leo Bluhm's wedding anniversary. They wake up together and go on to spend the day apart. Leo tends to his busy schedule as a college professor, Molly merely passes the time - hums Irish tunes as she does the housework, chats to neighbours and meets an old love.

All too aware that her husband has forgotten the significance of the day, Molly's frustration is reflected in a series of scribbled notes and telephone messages, as she struggles with the fact that he needs reminding at all.

Meanwhile, Leo breezes through the day with a careless nonchalance, catching too late the messages left for him by his wife.

In this momentous novel, Judith Kitchen brilliantly weaves these and other voices into an enthralling tapestry of a single day, an ordinary day, a day that might change their lives forever.

[read reviews]

Judith Kitchen's essays are lyrical and affecting meditations on place—those places to which we go back and the bittersweet ones to which we can never return. Blended with intelligent speculation on national history and literacy legacy, these exquisite pieces contain tender and lucidly detailed homages to Fred Astaire's hands, Kitchen's aging father, the color blue, and familiar and dreamed-about places.

"These lovely pieces flow like reveries (as, indeed, quite a few of them are) and reveal in virtually every case Kitchen's capacious heart. Like thoughts, the essays do no always end where they began and often establish surprising connections and uncover buried treasure...'Some books are better than others,' she declares. This is one of the former."

—Kirkus Review

Using the words of others as her wellspring, Kitchen takes us on excursions in time, self, and literature to examine the interconnectiveness of past, present, and future pieces of her life. Longer essays form the vertical threads of Kitchen's autobiographical tapestry, reflecting the shape of her identity as daughter, student, wife, teacher, and finally, well-known writer/editor/reviewer. Her quest defies chronology as she traverses a geography of memories in upstate New York, Brazil, New England, Wyoming, and Washington state. Shorter essays, laden with personal and political history, trace the horizontal threads of a three-week journey through Scotland, England, and Wales. Extending the spirit of Virginia Woolf and of philosopher Henri Bergson, Kitchen's travels take the reader to destinations where the dimensions of life intersect: past and present, political and personal, literary and literal.

[read reviews]

An excellent introduction for readers coming to Stafford for the first time and a valuable overview of the work for the many readers already familiar with his poetry, this book offers the best single guide to one of the most respected and celebrated poets of our time.

—Publisher's comment

"It is a fine, fine book. [Judith kitchen] uses the ordinary objects of women's concern—mirror, moon, bird, child, dance—but elicits from them reflections of her own authenticity that are utterly convincing. One thinks of Sappho and Emily Dickinson, their quietness from which they draw statements of passion that almost slip past us, until we truly awaken to them. The language and even more the images make us pay attention."

—Hayden Carruth, Judge, 1985 Anhinga Prize