THE BANISHED AND THE DEAD

Praise for THE BANISHED AND THE DEAD

Offering no absolution, the book portrays human emotions as dualistic: joy braided with sorrow, and clarity shadowed by doubt. A stark, deliberate confrontation with the truths people choose to remember and the ones people struggle to name, the poems collected in The Banished and the Dead highlight time’s indifference as an essential force in shaping human understandings of identity and legacy.

—Reviewed by Xenia Dunford, FOREWORD REVIEWS

The Banished and the Dead, Anne Leigh Parrish’s newest poetry collection…is both painfully autobiographical and joyfully hopeful. Parrish doesn’t shy away from difficult issues but dissects them with a scalpel. In “A Pearl Perhaps” it’s the clutch of religion, the Holier-than-Thou men and in “I’ll Teach You” our love affair with guns, sorrow sings to men who sleep with guns. She likewise meets hunger in America dead-on with “Declined” her poem about the hungry man with a maxed-out card. And the encroaching environmental crisis in “Take No Refuge” from space earth looks the same. Soon there will be less forest, more blue ocean. With quiet resolve and equal measure, she shows how the desert still blooms, how water is cherished, and dreams hold fast, the beauty in a Douglas fir and in the warming ground. A recipe for happiness—the simple pleasure of sipping lemonade and iced coffee, beauty at the door if we but step through and breathe.

— YVONNE OSBORNE, Black River

Listen to Anne Read from THE BANISHED AND THE DEAD

About ANNE LEIGH PARRISH

Anne Leigh Parrish is the author of seventeen books which include short stories, novels, and poetry. She is also an avid photographer and draws from rugged splendor of her home in the South Sound Region of Washington State. Learn more about Anne at www.anneleighparrish.com and also at www.laviniastudios.com.