The Pebble : Old and New Poems

Collecting the best of Mairi Maclnnes's previous work -- including her breakthrough poem "I Object, Said the Object" -- along with new poems, The Pebble reflects years of quandary and conflict at home and abroad as the poet imposes on them the order of poetry. This volume concludes with her essay "Why Poetry", on the clash between obligations and rights through which imagination must make its way.A native of England and of Highland Scots descent, who spent nearly thirty years in the United States, Maclnnes looks afresh at what a changing perspective brings. Hers is a poetry of estrangement, loss, madness, reprieve, stalemate, and reconciliation. The bonds between person and place, parent and child, traveler and homeland, are called into question. Maclnnes draws our gaze to the crack in the foundation, the friction within an ordinary exchange, the shifting of ground beneath a familiar landscape, the long step between a museum of art and the slums outside.