Back to the Light: Poems

Acclaimed poet George Ella Lyon returns with a brilliant new collection that traces the arc of a woman's life from girlhood to mature womanhood. In answer to the first poem, "Little Girl Who Knows Too Much," Lyon embarks on a journey from a child who was silenced to "Some Big Loud Woman" who claims the right to a voice. Along the way she meets allies and guides including Dickinson, Woolf, Mary Travers, Grace Paley, and the giver of dreams. As sailors once navigated by the stars, so Lyon navigates by these luminaries. They are not distant, though. Their light is always near.

Alternately witty, tender, shocking, and visionary, Back to the Light reveals the reunion of body and spirit, truth and story. In the process, it demonstrates the power of poetry to liberate and to heal.

George Ella Lyon, a former Kentucky Poet Laureate, is the award-winning author of more than fifty books for children and adults. Among her poetry collections are Voices of Justice, Many-Storied House, She Let Herself Go, Voices from the March on Washington (Cybils Award for Poetry), and Catalpa (Appalachian Writers Association Book of the Year). Her poem "Where I'm From" is featured in the PBS series The United States of Poetry and has become a model for teachers around the world. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky.