Whitethorn

In "Poem for Jenne," which opens Jacqueline Osherow's ambitious and challenging newcollection, a neighbor has planted larkspur and delphinium in the poet's yard and is tending them hoping to bring color and light into a household stricken by personal tragedy. As the bright blue, star-shaped flowers bloom for a second time, the poet writes, "earth's reaching for her heavens, I for words / or any chink of rapture I can claim." The pervasive theme, in this poem and throughout Whitethorn, is that hu