How Many Miles to Babylon?

"These clear-eyed, haunting poems map complex and intertwining responses to the question Anne Pluto's collection poses about desire, endurance, and the search for home. This journey en-compasses worlds: personal family histories, the widow poet's grief, and explorations of the politics and brutalities of war, in particular regarding the experience of women, who offer witness and example: from Isis to Hevrin Khalaf, from Akhmatova to Szymborska. In her poem "Books," Pluto reveals: " . . . I carried/grammatic hope and the knowledge that women/are the ones who weave the remains of ruin . . . " Indeed. These are unflinching poems of reckoning, beauty, and repair. - Mary Pinard, author of Ghost Heart (Ex Ophidia Press, 2023)