Plainspoken yet eloquent, Darnell Arnoult captures the moments that define whole lives:  "Mae at sixteen, about to be a bride;" a young mother watching her son catch a baseball, remembering his father at that age; a woman sewing buttons on a new green dress of "bright redemption," for she'll be "gone with the coming light;" a man awaiting his river baptism while his "trousers cling wet and heavy as past sins." An entire community comes to life in these extraordinary pages, written with uncommon skill, grace, understanding -- and love.

Darnell Arnoult's debut collection of poems-What Travels With Us-Is a brilliant showcase for what readers of her fiction already know:  Arnoult is a master storyteller as she conjures voice after voice, ordinary people in everyday lives.  These created worlds-rich in the detail of time and place and rendered in language both lyrical and precise-thrive on small and simple moments that translate to greater meanings and truths.  They speak of love and loss, joy and grief.  Her poems are novelistic at times as she opens the reader to generations and histories.  Her characters are quilters, planters, milkers, miners, spinners of both cloth and tales. There is a wise innocence that weaves these voices together: wise in an innate and intuitive response to life; innocent in its attention to the most basic and primal emotions of people who if not for the crafts and labor of everyday life might have no voice at all. Arnoult has interpreted their tales, given words and weight to their lives, with great honesty and compassion.