The Pear Tree

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Bethany Reid's </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>The Pear Tree: elegy for a farm</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> is more than a haunting elegy for a farm; it's a powerful evocation of childhood and a vanished way of life. In poems lush with detail Reid renders the beauty and suffering of bygone days not with nostalgia but with clear-eyed honesty as each poem reveals its hidden facets. Under the watchful eye of a pear tree planted by a grandmother on homesteaded land we witness the pleasure of day-to-day life rooted in the earth the heart-wrenching loss of a brother a father who taught us to choose what matters and put a fence around it a devout mother who can still play the piano when words have flown. Who will gather what we leave behind? one poem asks. Moving freely back and forth in time this well-steeped finely-honed collection offers a complex satisfying answer. </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>-Holly J. Hughes author of </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Hold Fast</em></p>