"In The Meeting Place, Dede Cummings exposes some of the more interesting cards in the deck of her life. The results are a series of openhearted, straightforward poems, which are as sensitive to the natural world as they are to the inner one. Best of all, they are sensitive to the reader, whose presence is welcomed (if sometimes shyly) into these intimate rooms." --Billy Collins "In Dede Cummings' The Meeting Place, we find a writer at the height of her powers, reaching back to the past to and not only herself, but also to explore her family's origins, and the sources of love that bind them together. Yet in these open-armed, funny, serious and sacred poems, we also meet ourselves over and over, for Cummings knows that the specific, when lovingly described, becomes the universal. Dede Cummings is 'writing to reach' a world desperately in need of the tenderness and affection that underpin each and every one of her poems." --James Crews "Neighborhood bullies, first love, the ties that thread sisters, mothers, a long marriage. The poems in The Meeting Place follow the longitudinal lines of family, as well as the globe. They take us to Portugal, Cuba, Vermont, Ireland and beyond. And like the jars of 'achingly red Roma tomatoes, ' Cummings describes, they invite you to open them and feast." --Danusha Laméris