Paradise, piece by piece

Poet Peacock narrates this abridgment of her work in a confident, assured voice. She writes her memoir from the perspective of midlife, comfortable at last with the choices she has made. She speculates about those choices and what led up to them, the most important of which was among the earliest: not to have children, advice given to her at age three by her grandmother upon the birth of her sister. Peacock never became a biological mother, but she has had her share of being a mother, namely in her early adolescence for members of her family. She taught creative writing in city schools. She had an extended relationship with an older man. Their accidental pregnancy ended in an abortion. Peacock maintained ties with her family-her alcoholic father in Florida; her hippie sister, dying of lung disease; her mother, dying of cancer.