"Fire In Paradise by Elizabeth Bayou-Grace and her father, Steven Lewis, depicts and enacts the unbreakable and natural bond between parent and child, poet and poet, as well as the contrasting identities that develop between different generations. Relentlessly deep and pleasing, rhythmic, often Whitmanesque in style, all of life—mountains to oceans, integrations of family and culture and society—is here. Reading Fire in Paradise is walking slowly through a vast room of colorful hand-stitched and storied quilts. Pausing at each, listening to the discovery of identity and place, I hear the uttered words, words I learn from, and pocket, like ore." — Carla Carlson, author of Love and Oranges

"In this shared collection, Steven Lewis and Elizabeth Bayou-Grace, father and daughter, have crafted lyrical narratives of surging consciousness; intimacies that merge, step back, then call into question, all the while remaining completely grounded in their own voices. Bayou-Grace, the spirit-storm: radical, fiery, defiant, ecstatic. Lewis, the Chief: keen observer, master of storyline, invites the reader to revel and surrender to the essential pain and bliss embedded in suspended time." — Olivia Grayson, author of The Smoking Mirror

"'Family harmonies' take on a unique dimension in this new collection of poems displaying the easy swing of the younger poet, Elizabeth, in counterpoint to the measured lines of her father, Steven. Fragile mortality and wistful nostalgia blend with youthful urgency, 'the sacred and the profane,' and the constant presence and awareness of one's place on the planet to produce a book that resonates with the reader long after the last page is turned." —Gregg Weatherby, author of Before We Forget, winner of the Aurora Poetry Prize

"If our bodies are our houses, Elizabeth and her father's book of poems, Fire in Paradise, takes us to places in the home only courageous writers explore. Think of the basement where we go when life has rattled our doors. Think also of the roof, where we gaze upon the ocean, the mother of everything living. These poems are compass settings to find the beauty we survive for." — Black Peace Eagle (born Lawrence Winters), author of The Making and Unmaking of a Marine

EBG Introduction

Fire in Paradise

Driving Past the Corner of Comfort & Paradise

Two-Stepping

DEAFSKY

Backwardsing

Destroying The Thing We Loved

When The Party's Over

On the Day Before My Marriage

The First Winter

Hidden Shake, Shawangunk Mountains, N

Some Days I Want To Die

First Spring in Massachusetts

On The Day We Lose Count of What Day It Is / Cloud Villanelle

Practicing Saying Goodbye

John Prine and I Sat Down In My Closet With All My Overalls

Forty-Four Ways of Saying I Miss You

I Want to Write Something Other Than Elegies

@ Frank O'Hara re: Citrus

Sitting on a Yard Rug

Loss Vs. Idea of Loss

February 23, 2021

April's Storm for Duane Mark

Invasive Plants, Etc.

History

Residents of the Multitudes

SL Introduction

From My Hospital Bed

Through My Hospital Window

The Sad and Tender Hearts of Warriors (and Birds)

Another Good Thing About Almost Dying

Time to Step into the Light Again

Wednesday on the Porch

Around the Bend

For Ever

Fifty-Two Years

From A Rusted Beach Chair

Standing in the Eye

Rima Asks Why Three Line Stanzas

Ode to this Frail Body

We Walk on the Beach After Getting a Letter From Hattie

Atonement on Flower Mountain

Like Their Mothers

Still We Gather Together

Amazing Grace

Ode To Nothing: A November Rumination

Art on the Other Side: A Sonnet

Three Days After Thanksgiving

Four Days After Thanksgiving

A Week After Thanksgiving

Sitting Under a Live Oak in Port Royal, SC Considering the Blank Page

Acknowledgments