Walking Lorton Bluff

In Walking Lorton Bluff, Paul Stroble travels to a cemetery in rural Illinois to visit the grave of his great-great-grandfather, killed in 1859 while hunting. In these poems--to be read in sequence--the author daydreams as he walks among the graves and experiences the peacefulness of nature. Dates on tombstones remind him of historical events, from antebellum America to the Holocaust, the Civil Rights movement, and to our own time. The author reflects on the interconnectedness of all things that calls us to care--for the natural world, and for one another.

One reviewer wrote, "A 'mild promise of heaven'-that's what the characters in these marvelous poems seek to understand. With people known and unknown, brave seekers whose emblems, dreams, and graves might vanish in time or in a Holocaust, these poems are history made into art."

Another reviewer wrote, "These are quiet poems, in the best possible sense, poems that ask us to be still and listen to our own pasts, to the grounds we walk on, to how our personal and political histories continue to shape our lives. 'Where is God/ in the far country/ of our muddy boots?' Stroble writes. And, 'I choose flowers/ for your unknown grave.' This is a lovely, politically engaged, and personally rich poetry book."