The Cure

In The Cure, Sarah Gorham's mature, eager, intelligent poetic voice explores family--and marriage; and self--as forms in which we move, escaping and demanding restraint, seeking and fearing contact with each other. The book moves toward and away from a riveting sequence, "The Family Afterward," that examines the intrusions and heartbreaks, complicities and narrowings of definition, that are forced upon the family members of an alcoholic. Gorham is interested in appetite: for drink, for sex, for oblivion, for comfort. The paradoxes she most thrillingly defines are the tightest ones, degrees and atmospheres apart. The Cure is both accessible and intimate; sometimes funny, sometimes desolate. Gorham describes a hike, the hiker coming upon a limestone cross, surrounded by the tchotchke-mementos of previous passers-by. She is flooded, but trusts the surprise of her emotion: "Very moving these rookie prayers/ This unmajestic gratitude." It's that delectable sensibility, the pause that yields finely tuned appreciation, that marks Gorham's vision, her cupped ear listening to the world.