Indwelling: Poems

by Libby Maxey

Indwelling explores different ways of being inside—inside a work of art, inside the history of a place, inside a pandemic’s constraints—but not necessarily at home. Isolated experience seeks the intimacy of indwelling, and that intimacy gradually expands to accommodate a broader, more global perspective. These are poems of connection attempted in the face of mortality, loss, and they personalize encounters with abandoned houses, nod at other writers who will never nod back, and look in old places for alternatives to modern ruts. They dignify the mundane, past and present, and find hope there, too.

88 pages, Paperback

Published March 22, 2024

About the author

Libby Maxey has a BA in English from Whitman College and an MA in medieval studies from Cornell University. She is a senior editor with the online journal Literary Mama, where she has been on staff since 2012. Her poems have appeared in Emrys, Mezzo Cammin, Crannóg, The Maynard, and elsewhere. Kairos, her first chapbook, won the 2018 New Women’s Voices contest at Finishing Line Press. She has also won the Princemere Poetry Prize (2021) and the Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest (2023), and has been awarded a Laureate's Prize in the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest (2023). Her nonliterary activities include singing classical repertoire, mothering sons, and administering the Department of Classics at Amherst College.

Reviews

[Amanda Jaros · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a work of art this book is! I made my way through it slowly so that I could digest each poem, for they each are gems to ponder over time.