New Old Stock. "In the bone-dry land of mesquites and drought, Janice

New Old Stock. "In the bone-dry land of mesquites and drought, Janice Whittington has found images that allow her to explore woman’s place in West Texas and the world from the perspectives of daughter, wife, friend, and mother. Filled with fear and fire, joy and sorrow, dust and water; the poems risk stepping into air, striving to glide like hawks on thermals. “Into a Thousand Mouths is the account of Eve after the fall, after she follows her husband out of the garden and of tilling yield....It is the account of one woman, of all womenâ€"’that female secret of wombs, / the ache that folds into the chest / and stays, a wound / nursed into a jewel (‘Daughters’)....“The connections between women and a needy world seem to be infinite, as the five sections of the book suggest, orchestrating and developing the connections of women to their fathers, their mothers, their grandparents and great-grandparents, to their heritage of pioneer women, to their displacement from the fecund East and their alienation in the seemingly barren West, to their daughters, and to their husbands. â€Â