William Jolliff's newest collection of poetry is a love song for a way of life that is no more. With the coming of industrial agriculture to rural Ohio, family farms and the communities they created and sustained passed away. And so too, now, have the women, the men, and most of the children who did the work. In the tradition of wise old farmers who would never let simple truth get in the way of a complicated story, At Rest in My Father's House is a confluence of family fictions, real-life events, and transformed memories. Each poem offers readers an intimate passage into the bottomlands of flyover country. Taken together, they chronicle a particular sensibility, a way of being in relationship with a place that-though ignored by the broader culture-is well worth remembering.
