The poems in Nostalgia's Thread offer an accessible and provocative reconsideration of the American experience as depicted in ten of Rockwell's best-known paintings. Arguably the only serious collection of poems inspired by Norman Rockwell's images, they were conceived just prior to the attacks of September 11th, 2001, and written in their wake.

These poems remind us that visual art is never static, the beholder's eye never innocent. They bear witness to the fact that each cultural era must reinterpret its rich artistic inheritance within the context of its current collective experience. With unflinching honesty and deep compassion, these poems present a personal and national past which is both comforting and disturbing, both "nostalgia's thread" and "the barbed wire / of memory."