The View from Childhood

A love letter to the lives, loves, losses, and other mysteries that lay at the heart of our history. Angela Alaimo O'Donnell, grandchild of Italian immigrants, granddaughter of coal miners, and author of twelve published poetry collections and thousands of poems, offers her most personal collection to date. These are poems that speak to people, for all of us come from somewhere—some world we have necessarily left behind but that still lives within us and makes us who we are. This book is for lovers of stories, told through artful poems and vivid prose, as it invites us all to reflect, laugh, smile, shed a tear, re-live, and perhaps even make sense of our own childhood experiences. Dip into it while sitting by the fire or gathered with friends and family in a shared celebration of our personal histories and the bonds that connect us to one another. "The childhood belonging to each of us is unique, as is each human being—yet there are some things that remain constant. We all have a mother and father, and, if we are lucky, sisters and brothers. We all have a place that we come from that has helped shape us into who we are. We all have memories that stay with us, bring us joy, and haunt us, and we all face the daily decision of what to do with those memories—to preserve them or to let them fade. My vocation, as a poet, compels me to turn them into story and song. These poems tell my stories, and I also hope they, in some way, tell yours." -Angela Alaimo O'Donnell