Look it up. Did you ever hear this as a child? When we didn't understand a word, we'd run to the dictionary to find meaning. But the practice of having a single word explained by words always leaves space for so much more than definition. Just a Word is Shelly Snow Pordea's meditation on the words we use every day but never had to look up. Grief. Hope. Beginning. End.

Youth. Age. Each poem takes a single word as its title and asks what no dictionary ever could: What does this word cost? What does it carry? What does it leave behind? What does it mean? Simple words. Anything but simple.