"Sometimes it's hard to know a miracle / is a miracle." Book of Miracles, Kelle Groom's fifth poetry collection, is devoted to seeing the miraculous in the everyday. Through anaphora and elegy, ekphrastic poems, list poems, litanies, prayers, fevers, and visions, Groom seeks commonplace or hidden miracles. These poems are an exploration of mystery and longing. The speaker's experience of alcoholism and recovery propels a desire for transformation. The natural world also opens to the miraculous. Other poems are whirls, almost dervish, in which the speaker transforms into something/someone else-another form, multiple selves, changeable states.
While exploring the idea that if one pays attention, the unseen will reveal itself, the speaker is keenly aware of the time she lives in and the great human suffering which many in power dismiss and hide. The speaker trusts her own eyes, and the power of seeing. Throughout Book of Miracles, these poems are invitations to see the miracles around us and in ourselves.
