Grafted Tree: Family Poems

Judith Prest's luminous book about families opens quite simply: Wherever I go/I bring a crowd along. Grafted Tree follows the treasure map of her rich experience in only the way this gifted poet can do. The reader takes us on a journey with her through the well-remembered stories of her life and newly unveiled secrets she has recently discovered.Written by a poet at her peak, Grafted Tree above all will resonate as a love letter to all kinds of family experience, written with understanding, compassion, and truth. As she writes in the book's concluding poem, I carry their history; /it has shaped mine/ My breath, my spirit/a bridge where/ they stand now/They wave to me/through the mist. -Jan Marin Tramontano, Poet and Novelist, Author of The Me I Was with YouGrafted Tree is a book about transformation, memory and love. Judith Prest takes us through her deep understanding of adoption, marriage and identity as a wife, mother and what it means to be a sister to newfound brothers. There is a longing for wholeness, for cure, for the compassion it takes to heal not only herself, but the world. And she succeeds in bringing these poems to fruition not only for herself, but for us as well.-June Gould, Ph.D., Author of The Writer in All of Us, E.P. Dutton. She is also a long-time workshop leader for The International Women's Writing Guild, and a published poet and novelist.Judith Prest brilliantly maps her poetic genealogy in her third book, Grafted Tree. Her writing offers familial depth in a diverse selection of form and emotion as she explores each surprising and glorious branch of Grafted Tree. -Suzanne S. Rancourt, Author of Billboard in the Clouds, murmurs at the gate, Old Stones, New Roads, and Songs of Archilochus