It Was Then

Diane Glancy's new book of verse experiments with biography as lyric. She shares the compelling story of her Cherokee father's work in a meatpacking plant. She selects memories and images that dramatize his story, one that speaks to me because my Native grandfather also worked in the same meatpacking plant in Kansas City. This is poor people's work, dangerous and physically difficult. This is the backdrop for Glancy's book-length meditation on children's resilience, families, loss, survival, and faith. This is one of Glancy's most emotional and effective compositions. Diane Glancy is the award-winning author of 30 books of poetry, prose, and drama. Her film Dome of Heaven was shown at the Los Angeles Skins Film Festival and other national venues. She is professor at Azusa Pacific University. "The speaker in Glancy's work articulates the importance of knowing her past, of searching it out, of celebrating it, for it is this past that mends the loneliness and fragmentation that she feels in the present. By bringing it all in, all together, the speaker finds continual, albeit temporary, restoration." Molly McGlennen, Studies in American Indian Literature