strong female protagonist by Heather M. Hoover

Heather Hoover‘s work invites the reader to travel into oceans and board rooms, classrooms and gardens, as somehow even a drive to work becomes a heroic journey, a bildungsroman.  Reading Heather Hoover‘s work reminds us that each thing that we encounter, like the act of “Teaching Literature, means “nothing, everything.” It falls to the poet to notice and make meaning of it all, and so she does, with stunning precision void of artifice. The simple act of noticing—a daffodil, a groundhog “full and fat” and stealing one’s produce—propels the reader into recollections of past, present, and possible futures. In centering and celebrating the “strong female protagonist,” Heather Hoover rejects crass calculations (“How much it is worth”) to focus instead on the work of remaining alive, attuned to something other than “this wrong question” that is weaponized so often against us. The violence of “Remember” sears into the reader’s mind the image of a torn Octopus healing herself before returning to the work of being alive, “Until at last, /she emerges, tiny/ perfect arm curled /against her own/ amazing body.” The “tiny perfect” moments at the heart of these poems render such acts heroic, and sometimes humorous, while “Red Sky in Mourning” imagines “an impossible 15-year/journey to the past” that becomes, instead, the valiant act of driving to work: “i want to cry, but no tears come/so i keep driving forward/to my destination.” This collection invites us to journey again and again through the recollections and re-visions of this poet, emerging with healed hearts and hopeful souls.

–Kayla Walker Edin, Ph.D.