Heart's Core

There isn't a false note in this book. Gardner is so completely present in each of her many settings, including the ones inside herself that we, the readers, can't be anywhere but with her. It's beautiful too that she doesn't try to tie a bow around what she's done, but instead leaves us with "not yet" and the hope that, some day, she'll go on. In these rich poems, the poet takes us as her travel companion as she journeys through places, memories, and ancestral musings on a quest for significance and self. Sometimes, she becomes like a librarian tracing obscure references, sometimes like a naturalist hunting specimens in bodies of water and stretches of forest, sometimes like a person on a spiritual scavenger hunt. These are poems of loss and retrieval, of finding your way.