Priscilla Long, CARTOGRAPHIES OF HOME

CARTOGRAPHIES OF HOME, Priscilla Long, MoonPath Press, 2026.

Cartographies of Home, the latest collection of poems from Priscilla Long, divides the poems and her life into three sections, beginning with her childhood on the Eastern Shore of Maryland: turkey buzzards, garter snakes, molasses milk, honeysuckle.  In the middle section, the poems escort us through college, Viet Nam, Civil Rights, Greyhound bus stations, Viceroy cigarettes, banjo music. In the final section Long embraces old age. Also the author of Dancing with the Muse in Old Age, she does so with authority. She’s packed for this journey, and she knows what to do now that she’s here (write more).

I’ve been immersed in house stuff. First a bathroom remodel, then a leaky roof, stained carpets, a big leak under the kitchen cabinets, a kitchen remodel. (Those are only the highlights.) So of course I gravitated this morning to this poem:

House Bones

My old house. The small muntined window
in a step-up closet. A carpenter measuring,

cogitating, a hundred years ago. Kitchen
windows, cupboards of painted wood, fir

floorboard creaking its unforgetting.
The living-room cove ceiling curves down

to meet its molding. Mantelpiece, tiled
fireplace, the oak floor worn, telling me

I, too, am part of time; party also
to the tree felling, forest-killing

of house-making. I don’t forget stud
and beam, lintel, doorknob, latch,

and knocker. I look out single-hung sash
windows. Architect Louis Kahn said:

The window is a wonderful thing
from which you get the slice of light

that belongs to you and not the sun.
The ladder-back chair, wood-turned stile

and finial, its rush seat—Grandma Henry
owned it, sat in it. I now take my turn.

—Priscilla Long

You may have noticed that yesterday’s post also had a poem with a muntined window. Calling things by their right name is a signature feature in all Long’s writing: muntined, step-up closet, fir floorboard, living-room cove ceiling, beam, lintel, doorknob, latch. Such a pleasure!

If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, then you know I’ve visited Long’s books before. Here’s the link to her website, and a few of my earlier posts as well: Priscilla Long: HOLY MAGIC; The Unsinkable Priscilla Long.

Priscilla Long at Folio, Feb. 2026