– Shubhangi Swarup (Latitudes of Longing)

    Gathers poems on a variety of subjects including love, marriage, parenthood, modern life, animals, aging, travel, work, and food.

    Here is the 25th anniversary edition of Jong's debut collection, a surrealistic, funny, gastronomic, erotic, serious book about being human and female and American. 96 pp.

    The title poem confronts a human ritual of marriage from the standpoint of a wedding photographer. Within the tedium and alienation of the ceremony, the speaker grapples with a strange human hopefulness. In this vein, Stone explores our everyday patterns and customs, and in doing so, exposes them for their complexities. Drawing on the neurological, scientific, psychological, and even supernatural, this collection confronts the difficulties of love and family. Stone rankles with a desire to understand, but the questions she asks are never answered simply. These poems stroll along the abyss, pointing towards the absurdity of our choices. They recede into the imaginative in order to understand and translate the distressing nature of reality. It is a bittersweet question this book raises: Why we are like this? There is no easy answer. So while we look down at our hands, perplexed, Someone Else’s Wedding Vows raises a glass to the future.