Good Enough

This collection of narrative poems illuminates the life-affirming power of storytelling. Portraying the rough texture of a fictional Vermont community the author first weaves a tapestry of quirky characters all desperate for human connection. She bases many of these characters on individuals in the town where she went to college in Vermont. Her work at a coffee shop in this town inspired the human landscape she sketches at the end of the book. In a café in Vermont such calloused characters as the ones from the beginning unite. Between the Vermont poems the author illustrates her experience growing up as a third-generation Holocaust survivor. Crystallizing pain into writing she emerges from the silence and trauma inherited from her father and grandmother. In another poem she shares her story of losing a romantic relationship. These two middle pieces reveal language as a means not only of connection but also of navigating emotions that range from desperation and obsession to faith and love.