Gathering the Pieces of Days is a collection of 52 poems-one for each week of the year-born from a daily ritual begun by LeeAnn Pickrell in 2018. Committing to a page each morning about the previous day, she captured life's details in real-time, later condensing each week into a page of reflections. The following year, Pickrell transformed these 52 weeks of thoughts into poetry, blending free verse, prose poetry, contrapuntals, and list poems. This book emerged as a year of life expressed through poetry-messy, frustrating, joyful, and bittersweet.
In these poems, no subject is too small or too grand. Pickrell reminds us to savor everything: the morning coffee, a baseball game, the warmth of a loved one beside us, a cat curled at the foot of the bed, dreaded work, and cherished moments with friends. Her poems span mundane moments and profound emotions, inviting us to notice each fleeting day. Gathering the Pieces of Days celebrates the extraordinary hidden within the ordinary, from laughter and love to loss and longing, and the dreams that carry us forward.
