Lee Peterson' s The Forgiveness Dream reimagines Sophocles' Antigone in a series of dramatic monologues that, while ancient, speak to current crises-- to questions of rupture and repair, displacement and migration, to war, justice and fracture. Yet more intimate themes and concerns-- around loss, grief, memory, and fathers and daughters-- weave throughout the finely-etched poems in Peterson' s third chapbook. While the book takes the heroine Antigone as its central figure, male characters figure prominently, as do questions of male authority and the wounds men carry, heal, inflict, rise to meet, and sink under. And on either side of Antigone' s story sits more personal lyrics that wrestle with loss and wonder what' s left when home has no name.
The Forgiveness Dream