These poems explore the author's Southern Baptist upbringing and how that history echoes through her adult experiences of sexual love, self-knowledge, loss and motherhood. Her testament is that of a life, a family and a world.

These poems explore the author's Southern Baptist upbringing and how that history echoes through her adult experiences of sexual love, self-knowledge, loss and motherhood. Her testament is that of a life, a family and a world.

Winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, selected by Robert Wrigley

Season of the Second Thought begins in a deep blue mood, longing to find words for what feels beyond saying. Lynn Powell's poems journey through the seasons, quarreling with the muse, reckoning with loss, questioning the heart and its "pedigree of Pentecost," and seeking out paintings in order to see inside the self. With their crisp observations and iridescent language, these poems accumulate the bounty of an examined life. These lines emerge from darkness into a shimmering equilibrium--witty, lush, and...