Crossing the Great Divide

Author: Jean Feraca

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press (2008)

Crossing the Great Divide, has not been widely available until now but forms a fascinating counterpoint to the story of emergence she reveals in her memoir. Brilliant, passionate, sexual, these poems travel into mythic ancestral landscapes in southern Italy and Sicily, on a psychic journey of self-discovery, sometimes luminous, sometimes harrowing, leading ultimately to deliverance, as in the title poem of the collection: "I shall live out my life rejoicing ribboning under the jagged shadow of the hawk. There is no reason for this joy eagle-bald, knifing through me like a canyon. There is nothing in this landscape that defines me."