Home

"---a parcel of the soil not wide enough
or firm enough to build a dwelling on,
or deep enough to dig a grave, but cool
and sweet enough to sink the nostrils in
and find the smell of home, or in the ears,
rumors of home, like oceans in a shell" (Cowley 15).

The quote above, taken from Malcolm Cowley's Exile's Return describes the sincere longing a person or people feel for a place entitled home- and when that feeling of home is gone, or rendered unattainable, that feeling of home is only able to survive in memories. The quote above, part of a poem details the earnest memories contrived from such simplicity as soil, or a shell that beholds the whole of life for a singe person, or groups of people.
The first chapter of Exile's Return: The Blue Juniata conveys magnificently the in depth description of a home or place where one belongs, and then the nostalgia sets in, for the description was a memory. Cowley's childhood narrative differs from his adolescent narrative-for the tone changes- the initial thoughts of home are infiltrated with images of war.
The book traces Cowley's experiences as a child coming of age would-as a child one does not realize the effects of the outside world until adolescence. At that point the readers are aware of the changes to that place called home, and these changes produced exile. After the war, never again will life and home return to that initial state of contentment that Cowley spoke of.