Praise for VISITATION:

“Pain is the burden of love.  We are reminded of this again in Maggie Blake Bailey’s poems, which report on the experiences of family life with a candor that’s both intense and delicate.  As one of Bailey’s speakers declares, There is no release without payment, / and payment is measured in damage.  And yet, Visitation is also a book of repair, of putting everything back together.  In lyric disclosures that look at the body, the family, and creation itself as visions of home, Visitation is a darkly moving debut book.” 

— Rick Barot, author of THE GALLEONS

“The definition of metaphor/ is the transfer of burden, so pay attention.” This, the opening stanza of Maggie Blake Bailey’s Visitation, gives us a taste of what’s to come: the body “an advent calendar”; “each church a brick leaning against the night.” Bailey’s metaphors are at once startling and just-right, and her themes—motherhood, place, faith, and the narratives we carry from childhood into our adult lives—are timeless. What a gift it is to see the world filtered through this poet’s imagination and intelligence.”

—Maggie Smith, author of GOOD BONES