In the Bare Bones House of Was is a collection of poems that broadly addresses ideas of place, politics, and the passage of time, while intimately reflecting on the ghosts and histories that reside beside the poet in her very old house In Virginia, and that remain a constant in a culture of the American South. The eponymous poem--as well as many other poems in this collection--emerged from extensive historical research concerning the house, farm and lands. In that process the poet discovered that the past is truly ever-present; this idea radiates throughout the collection as she investigates and explicates questions of love, loss, betrayal, and truth through the lenses of history, race, and ethnography, as well as from a personal perspective.
