Jan Chronister

Leaving Lumberton

Arts & Literature

“In Leaving Lumberton, the poet struggles to break free of a bleak existence. Ruined bodies and destruction dominate; lives are haunted by an ‘unseeable enemy.’ Then Sheryl Slocom enters a more personal world defined by real and metaphorical horizons: leaving a daughter at college, the planting of crops, the release of death. Finally, she writes of rebirth, stars, gleaming fountains, churches full of music instead of desolation. I was pulled in by these masterful poems.”