Quilting the Loose Edges

In Quilting the Loose Edges, Susan Woods Morse honors the travelers and the quilters in her family. These poems illustrate generations of journeys-her grandparents' migration from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to the oil fields in Texas, then up and down the west coast to settle in California's San Joaquin Valley, mirrored against her own journey from California to Maine and back west again to settle in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Like a quilt, this collection is a tapestry stitched together-a landscape of the places she has known and the people she has loved. -------------------
"Morse showcases a true talent for imbuing the smallest human details with authenticity and layered meanings...both intellectually stimulating and emotionally engaging, written with clear eyes and an open, curious heart." -John Sibley Williams, author of The Drowning House
"[W]e can feel the grit, the biting winter cold, the hope for a new spring...these poems form a well-blocked legacy, leaving behind their long threads of forgiveness." -Marilyn Johnston, author of Before Igniting

"The poet's relocations and family relationships are necessarily individual, but they connect with a larger story of Americans' migrations over the past century, and their particulars will reverberate with those of many readers' lives." -Eleanor Berry, author of Works of Wildfire

"Part memoir, part love song, part elegy, part travelogue, this collection journeys beyond any common foundation." -Nancy Christopherson, author of The Leaf