Like Luanne Castle’s other volumes of poetry (Kin Types and Doll God), the poems of Rooted and Winged explore family, kinship, life, and death. A trail of images always ties the reader to the earth and nature. In this newest chapbook, Castle also explores flight and falling and the Sonoran desert.
As the mother of an adopted child now seeking his birth mother, I was particularly struck by lines from “For an Adopted Child”: One day you will see us together and understand/the warning you have heard your whole life/about the missing.
I am coming to terms with the fact that my Black son may not have much interest in the history of his White family. I was particularly moved by the opening and closing lines of Castle’s prose poem, “How to Create a Family Myth”: My grandfather built a city with his tongue” and I plucked a heart from the clouds and tucked it safely inside/the brick house in the city where it keeps the city alive to this day.
These poems are rooted in the soil, the flora, and the fauna of the Sonoran desert, from saguaro cacti to hawks to bobcats. Castle is an expert at twining words into images that make the heart ache and the mind soar. This is truly an extraordinary collection of poetry.
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Rooted and Winged (Finishing Line Press, September 9, 2022) is available through:
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