Vortex Street - Paperback

by Rachel L. Macaulay (Editor), Heather H. Thomas (Author)

Heather H. Thomas's Vortex Street is a road through loss, conflict, and change where the shocks of being are personal and global. The street spirals inward and outward in space and shuttles back and forth through time. It leads from the poet's Pennsylvania riverside home to places and events in Bosnia, Brazil, Egypt, Israel, Syria, Turkey, and Newtown, Connecticut, disregarding boundaries we think we have in place to protect us. Thomas addresses lost others in a process that transforms pain into something larger, a healing, sustainable love. That the scientific phenomenon of the "vortex street" in water and air appears to look like our own genetic code, the double helix, suggests that this is the place where we live. Here, in the space of the poem, language bears, confronts, and reimagines our possibilities.

Author Biography

Heather H. Thomas is the author of six poetry collections, including Practicing Amnesia, twice a finalist in the National Poetry Series; Resurrection Papers; and Blue Ruby. Her honors include a Rita Dove Poetry Prize and a Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry. Thomas's poems have been translated into seven languages, including Arabic, Hebrew, Lithuanian, and Spanish. An award-winning teacher, Thomas is devoted to sharing the creative and healing power of poetry. She lives in Reading, Pennsylvania.