Re-Membering

Love, Loss, Death and Beauty
In Re-Membering, subtitled "In the midst of life we are in death." from Book of Common Prayer, 1662, Burial of the Dead, Alice Hildebrand explores the complicated relationships within families, especially between mother and daughter, brought into sharp relief by illness and death. Her poems start with the description of the impact of a mother's alcoholism on a child as seen through that child's yearning for greater connection, and move through the life cycle to finally letting go of that wish. In it we see the sadness of the child turn into the compassion and acceptance of maturity, and an exploration of what it means for a daughter to also be a mother herself. Throughout, the poems celebrate the richness of the natural world in which human lives unfold, and express the persistent presence of endings, of loss and death as an integral part of life. The author locates herself and us within the stream of her family's history, and contextualizes that stream within the larger motions of the universe.