Central to the Task

In her new collection, Central to the Task, Lisa Rhoades offers poems that explore gardens, neighborhoods, and the intimate rooms of family life and reflect on the delicate balance between sorrow and grace.

Rhoades attends to details of nature-forsythia blooming into spring, birds moving through the branches before dawn, light shifting on water. She demonstrates how closely the rhythms of the landscape mirror the life of the heart. Her poems focus steadily on illness, loss, marriage, parenting, and the passage of time, with a quiet reverence for everyday moments.

Using free verse and formal structures, Rhoades's voice remains clear, observant, and deeply humane. A fallen bird, a winter shoreline, acts of tending a garden, and memories of loved ones form a startling gateway into questions about belonging and resilience. Rhoades returns repeatedly to what remains essential--a microcosm of daily life that inevitably explodes into a universe.

Contemplative, honest, and quietly hopeful, Central to the Task invites readers to pause and to notice the overlooked grace surrounding them.