Claiming Breath

Like poets of legend, Diane Glancy has spent much of her life on the road. For years she supported her family by driving throughout Oklahoma and Arkansas teaching poetry in the schools. Claiming Breath is an account of one of those years, what Glancy calls "a winter count of sorts, a calendar, a diary of personal matters . . . and a final acceptance of the broken past. . . . It's a year that covers more than a year."

Diane Glancy teaches creative writing and Native American literature at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her collections of poetry, Iron Woman, and of short fiction, Trigger Dance, have also won major prizes.