Out Toward Morning

Spent by their losses, people come to an impasse and must forge new ways to understand the world. As the philosopher Stanley Cavell wrote, " We have to learn to think after thinking comes to a dead end." In the poems of Out Toward Morning, leaf-gatherers, dog-walkers, children and artists are caught unlearning ways of thinking, to live " after thinking." Stearns blends memory and history with humor and hope in poems that present us with a coming-of-age with age, its fears, paradoxes, and freedom, reminding us that while change is part of life, so too, inevitably, is transformation. In the poem that closes this collection, when a transfigured Daphne " examines her tattoos," we see how the most beautiful, redeemable of human forms emerges " when the gods bear down."

Author: Catherine Stearns
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Off the Grid Press
Published: 09/22/2026
Pages: 80
ISBN: 9781946830463