Becoming Sky

"It's the job of children / to reconstruct and make something / trustworthy of their parents," writes Joseph Hardy in his second breathtaking poetry collection, Becoming Sky. But doing so places undue burden on children against the natural order. This is the embattled but rewarding journey undertaken by Hardy, indeed, the same journey many of us face: to reconcile our parents' pain and past with whatever toll they inflicted on us in neglect or unknowing. That reconciliation may well be our salvation, the gift realized in poet Mary Oliver's "box full of darkness." Thankfully, Hardy's poignant childhood accounts are leavened with wit, humor, and a starry wisdom spinning out beyond one family's failings and into the wondrous human space we occupy, spectacularly and ultimately healing to body and spirit. Above all, this fine work brings the gift of mercy to ourselves and to those who shaped us into "an exhalation of light." -Linda Parsons, author of Candescent and Valediction

Joseph Hardy's poems move (and move us) with clarity, detail, and striking metaphor. His poems remind us "...how hard it is to find our true shapes," and that "we are malleable and concealed, and the light/ within us feels like it comes from someplace else." There's a strong, consistent tone, personal, yet in service of other voices, respecting memory enough to honor those others without easy nostalgia or falsification. The goal of Hardy's poems seems to be the cultivation of "an odd tenderness/ toward ourselves, an unfounded trust/ in our imperfect knowing." -Max Garland, author of Into the Good World Again.

In his collection Becoming Sky, we see the poet reach back, first to other children in need and then to his child self, to realize, recognize, and forgive. In this beautifully lyric narration of recognition, using his experience with others as vehicle, most particularly his mother, Hardy employs "pick and shovel" to give witness to the holiness of our often times hidden light and the wholeness of our destiny as stardust. A lovely and poignant collection from a gifted poet. -Darnell Arnoult, author of Galaxie Wagon, and forthcoming Incantations.