Title: Aging in Place

Publisher: ‎Water's Edge Press LLC (April 15, 2025)

Language: ‎English

Softcover: ‎40 pages

Genre: Poetry

ISBN-13: ‎978-1-952526-25-1‎

Reviewed by: Lisa Lickel

Upon retirement, find them, become them

Those women who have time to go to the Y during the day, the poet says…those women are just finding their new place in life after age sixty, which feels like the new forty in Lynn Aprill’s latest book of clever, poignant, frank verse. It’s our job to jump in the deep end of aging and sink or swim.

Aprill uses form with relish, a zuihitsu checklist of the things we all have forgotten at one time or another; often multiple times during the day. I thought I lost my passport the other day and spent a half hour cleaning out old files anyway. In a sijo, we inhale the aroma of new grandson; in villanelle, the gradual realization that the everywhere of another’s discomfort, of pain, is now ours. It hurts everywhere, our shared nightmare. Couplets, three-line and five-line stanzas, glorious freeform, the poems are uncompromising in their poke at life, hazy memories fragmenting, the thought of what we once enjoyed, the drama of what we’re becoming.

Written in two segments with an epilogue poem, Aprill gradually guides us toward reconciliation with dreams of the house we hold until we die, the habits of a lifetime of ordering a suit every year, of visiting familiar places; the ravages of stroke, dementia, rehab we always hope is temporary. A favorite is a Boomer Pitch for a popular television reality show in which the reality is not just growing food, but preparing, preserving, herding it…while taking care of yard and the prize spouse.

A final thought in For My Daughter is a pause for all of us—how will I age? What will I remember…and forget?

Aging in Place is a thoughtful, beautifully drawn picture of who we are, will be, and once were.

Poetry lovers will return to read these poems over and over.