Retracing My Steps by Jayne Moore Waldrop, NWVS #144

Jayne Moore Waldrop’s  Retracing My Steps is presented as a chapbook but the power of the poems inside give it the force of a fully achieved book. Waldrop’s voice is strong, clear, confident, convincing. The nineteen poems, several two pages in length, reflect the mature consciousness of a strong, observant woman who shares what she sees and hears, thinks, experiences and remembers. An occasional colloquial touch in some of the poems grounds the writing in regional earth. Retracing My Steps is a solid achievement.

–Gurney Norman, Kentucky Poet Laureate 2009-2010, Author of Divine Right’s Trip and Kinfolks: The Wilgus Stories

“Re-vision–the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction—is for women more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival.” Adrienne Rich wrote those words, imagining the rescue that happens when one woman dares to remember. In “Retracing My Steps” Jayne Moore Waldrop debuts a voice capable, not only of re-visioning her own life, but also those of countless other women….Waldrop is that rare writer who understands each and every woman holds in her body a story as big as myth, both sacred and shared. Buy this little book. Give it to your mother, your grandmother, your son. Then write the first word of your story. Jayne and I, we dare you.

–Rebecca Gayle Howell, author of American Purgatory and Render /An Apocalypse, James Still Writer-in-Residence, Hindman Settlement School, and poetry editor for Oxford American.

In this debut chapbook, Jayne Moore Waldrop maps her own and her family’s journey with a clear eye and a steady voice….An added gift of these carefully crafted poems is how they call us to consider our own journeys. I look forward to where Waldrop will take us next.

–George Ella Lyon, Kentucky Poet Laureate 2015-2016, author of Many-Storied House: Poems and Where I’m From