The title of this poetry collection is taken from Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe - "Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into the nakedness and night again,and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas." Cathy Smith Bowers served North Carolina as its sixth Poet Laureate from 2010 until 2012. She is a South Carolina naive who now lives in Tryon, North Carolina and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Queens University in Charlotte. Not surprisingly, those discerning poetry readers, Bob and Beto at Iris Press were the first to publish her. Four more poetry collections followed before she was named Poet Laureate. She has told interviewers that among the life-events that have influenced her poetry are the suicide of her second husband, the death of a brother of AIDS and another brother from drug and alcohol abuse, and her estrangement from her father.
Oak Ridge,TN: Iris Press, 1997, Trade paperback.