The Owning Stone

What do you do when you can’t throw away the stone that contains your dead father’s possessive spirit? When a 38 caliber handgun comes knocking on your midnight door? When the woman you desire inhabits an ordinary world so alien to yours that you can only look at her when she’s asleep? When all of the women of your town–mothers, daughters, sisters, grandmothers–run away and leave you alone with the other men? When the very best thing in your life is throwing a ball for your worshipful dog? When two young men wearing slim black ties show up at your door pushing bicycles and want nothing less than your soul? These provocative narrative poems–what Peterson prefers to call “situation poems”–attempt to provide answers to these and to many other such questions. With surprising yet apt metaphors and images, with language tightened to the point of breaking, the poems of this new edition of The Owning Stone dramatize the situations that capture and hold us, and the potential paths of escape and transcendence that can free us.