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Nothing is more difficult than making sense of the loss of meaning, yet nothing is more urgently necessary. For the forests burn and the wetlands dry up, and myth and poetry, twins born from their mysteries, fade into obscurity. Without them, and the dreams they are made of, we are captured by carbon, and the prose of inevitability replaces the poetry of hope. Raising the standard of poetry and myth, this collection once more makes sense of the loss of meaning, resists their fading away, and reminds us that, in saving our woods and wetlands, we save our stories and ourselves, too.-Sascha Engel, Plant AnarchyDawid Juraszek bends the ancient world of mythology into a singularity of climate change-not through mythological giants like Gilgamesh, Antigone, or Aphrodite-but in the poem "Ishtar Descending to the Underworld," a poetic response to a modern world: "Through the first gate / gone were her wetlands // through the second / her old-growth forests" and then go to free-flowing rivers, coral reefs, grasslands, and glaciers. Still, what might seem like background in this mythological world is foreground in "Had She Asked Him," the seven-part series that balances humanity's reality in the immediate presence of carbon capture.-Sandra Fluck, The Write LaunchPoems rattle off the page in short, unfettered staccato bursts. The words bleed into each other and offer the reader a philosophical pointillism where each phrase and fractured sentence are cumulative, building layers of meaning forcing the reader to modify their understanding. Totally fascinating.-Jack Caradoc, Dreich

In her newest collection, Abundance/Diminishment, Ann E. Michael knows "the nature of memory...that we forget." At the same time, she acknowledges within nature "a place to remember and to rest." It is between these two markers-nature and the nature of memory-that her poems flourish. An avid gardener and hiker-as well as a lover of learning, language, and the arts-she names abundance and diminishment; she identifies pivotal points, "lattices of a single molecule/that balances the morning." Unsurprisingly, much of Abundance/Diminishment consists of elegies-for the earth, for being wholly present, for a father, for friends, for a mother's lost memories, for a missed daughter, and for children unborn. Here, "the floor drops out of the bottom/of our daily prayers." Here, she recites, "Empty accepts what is given. Sorrow. Joy." Here, when grief overwhelms, she remembers to "feel the cellist's breath/swell against resonant spruce"; to listen to "animals, who tell us what we won't hear." And here, she asks, "How can I teach myself...the fact of gone/during a humid night/in late summer//while crickets sing?" The answer to the reader is in these well-tended and moving poems. -Marjorie Maddox, author of In the Museum of My Daughter's Mind Abundance/Diminishment reminds us of the ethics of craft, language, diction and illuminative rhyme. Whether the topic at hand is gardening, meteor showers, or grief, the surprise of irony swerves towards the "something more" to life, a new way of experiencing the world through felt imagery. Voice, tone, and style play with and against literature that has come before this text to arrive at an understanding of a before and after in the present, wisely speaking to how love provides motivation, in spite of despair, by finding solace in connection. Ann Michael's complete and accomplished poems, through semantic sleight of hand, sensitize us to how alive a human can be, illustrating time is a thing enlivening the body, and change is not necessarily enervating: hope and perseverance, demonstrated through the workings of the natural world, show how humanity progresses and evolves. The religiosity of a lived day in these poems grounds a generosity towards the world that feels rare in this contemporary moment of poetry. These beautifully achieved poems of finality and continuance, dispassionate and humorous, represent a voice of a generation and place, a poetry not just anyone can write. -Ian Haight, author of Celadon Ann E. Michael's poems of fullness and emptiness combine keen observation, philosophical questions, and a refreshing groundedness that invite the reader into complex, cleanly crafted contemplations of ordinary moments-moments turned extraordinary through her clear-eyed vision and delicious language. Smart, surprising, and wry, these poems honor equally the losses and the gains. A rich and rewarding collection. -Hayden Saunier, author of A Cartography of Home

Marc Darnell is an online tutor and lead custodian in Omaha, Nebraska, and has also been a phlebotomist, hotel supervisor, busboy, editorial assistant, and farmhand. He received his MFA from the University of Iowa where he studied under Gerald Stern, Marvin Bell, and Pulitzer Prize winner James Tate. First published at age 15, he has published in numerous journals in the last 40 years and has been published on 4 continents. His second book, The Sower, was recently published by CyberWit Press. He has forthcoming books from Impspired Press and CyberWit Press. He twice received the Academy of American Poets Award for the state of Nebraska and once for the state of Iowa.

Ann E. Wallace had to fight for language just as she had to fight for air in her journey with Long Covid, and the poems here are hard won marvels, full of insight and compassion and fiercely nurtured hope. Here, the world becomes poem-the virus is a "mad villanelle", each of us a stanza "braided to the other to the other, /with no beginning and no end." Here, breath is painful and precious, never taken for granted. I could feel my own breath change as I read this necessary collection, this important chronicle of our pandemic era. "..for every/piece of you that has broken," the poet reminds us, "a new angle/becomes visible." I'm so grateful for all the new angles Wallace makes visible in these pages, for the narrative she's woven from and about our ruptured time.-Gayle Brandeis, author of The Art of Misdiagnosis: Surviving My Mother's SuicideIn her evocative new collection Days of Grace And Silence, Ann E. Wallace delves into the profound question of living deliberately in the midst of a pandemic. With poignant insight, she guides us through this time of uncertainty as we coexist yet remain apart. Wallace's poems serve as a profound documentation of our interior worlds and the lodestar that guide us. These missives are a gentle reminder that poetry is a tool for understanding and empathy, as we craft words as evidence to make sense of our lives. In the dailyness of her poems, Wallace uncovers the extraordinary concealed within the ordinary. This book is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, making meaning and connections through adversity, offering readers a journey through the uncharted territories-the infinity of hope.-January Gill O'Neil, author of Glitter RoadAnn E. Wallace navigates her Covid experience with poetic finesse, and in the process reveals to readers her grace, fortitude, and stunning perseverance. Wallace weaves her words into a powerful meditation of spirit from the early days of her illness and of the pandemic and through the later days with effortless eloquence and arresting authenticity. "Could you ever understand, if you were not / here in this quiet place of fear with me?" Wallace's renderings of her plight with Covid and of the rigors of the pandemic are steeped with not only hard truths, but of compassion and luminous respites. Days of Grace and Silence by Ann E. Wallace is a tender, dynamic, and enlightening poetry collection for our times.-Jeannie E. Roberts, author of As If Labyrinth-Pandemic Inspired Poems and other books

In Hours of the Desert, Roxanne Doty leads us through a "blind land," from academic conferences to brutal stretches of desert, to downtown Phoenix, where the unhoused dance, share their apples, and bow down in front of traffic. We meet immigrants, scholars, police, policy makers, border patrol agents, a priest, grey wolves and even an angel. In tales conveyed with a deep reverence for the Sonoran Desert-which becomes a living entity in these poems, a witness to struggle, tragedy, and rising urban sprawl-Doty reminds us that "beauty has a strangeness, and sadness a dignity." With a clear eye and a steadfast hand, she recounts stories of the dispossessed, and in those tales we see reflections of ourselves and a failed American dream.-Alfred Fournier, author of A Summons on the WindPoems go deeper than facts. Roxanne Doty has filled her book with observations and stories begging to be noticed. She points to the cold eyes of bureaucracy as she makes compassion a priority when looking closely instead of dismissing individual dramas as a disturbance to social complacency. Every person crossing the border in pursuit of a better life deserves the attention afforded in these pages which bring out what news bulletins generally omit. With a writing style that flows easily and creates clear pictures of those in need Roxanne brings color and atmosphere to the otherwise urgent scenes she describes. Back in the city, she is alert to those people struggling to make it through life or just across the road and in any situation she sees and records what is easily overlooked. A few written lines work here like lines drawn by a skilled artist to suggest much more than is immediately seen.-David Chorlton, author of Life Goes On and Unmapped Worlds

"Where will the accumulations of the daily joys go?" asks the still and tender voice in Angela Hoffman's Hold the Contraries. The answer, this collection suggests, depends-not on our ability to control or limit suffering, but on our full surrender to a "broken-open" attention-a frailty that startles each person "back into the world." The quiet courage found here invites us to "live into our answers" by embracing fullness and emptiness, both. A pilgrimage rooted in well-earned wisdom and beauty.-Lauren K. Carlson, inaugural Lorine Niedecker Fellow and author of Animals I Have Killed In Hold the Contraries, Angela Hoffman explores the paradoxes that life presents. Here are poems of emotional complexity, rapturous imagery, and surprising juxtapositions: "I cut the last of the pink hydrangeas. I cut off intimacy." They acknowledge pain, doubt, "driving in fog, snow, rain, ice," reveal "evening primrose, night phlox / all dancing in their nightgowns." Amid suffering, Hoffman struggles to find peace: "sit in the stillness, / feel earth's tender breath, just like the moth." Both spiritual and deeply human, these poems were "composted in my garden, / turned over and over into wisdom." I savored them; so will you.-Peggy Turnbull, author of The Joy of Their HolinessThis is a most enjoyable collection of poems. The works engage the senses and massage all emotions. Angela's skill in a poem's universality shines in "When Clouds Break Open" and "Rain" Her keen observation skills give the reader focus on a wide range of science facts and human interactions. Her personal poems take the reader on the journey of Angela's adult life and finding her voice.-Nancy Rafal, Door County Poet Laureate 2019-2021

One of life's most delightful occurrences is being introduced to a world you didn't realize existed and certainly didn't understand. Kelly Sargent pulls the curtain back on the struggles and giggles of twin sisters-one deaf, one partially deaf-and their innocent solutions to communication. Using sign language is not a new concept, but when you're a child without access to a formal language, you do what is natural-you create your own. Each poem is a treasure of understanding, compassion, and persistence in overcoming the challenges of functioning in a world that can't be heard. This book is a touching tribute to a young girl born with "limitations" who outgrew them all, and a sister who loved her without limits.-j.lewis, Editor of Verse-Virtual and author of goodbye sounds likeWho steps in to provide therapeutic services when twin girls, one hearing-impaired and one deaf, are adopted overseas by military parents? Of course, the little girls do it themselves! In beautiful poems, we see fingers touching throats to feel sound and children signing into cupped hands in the dark of night, as in "Handheld Voices" where "fingers wiggled, / thumbs folded, / knuckles bent, / tendons flexed. // Palms opened and closed, like oysters." Kelly Sargent conveys her role as defender, interpreter, speech therapist, and friend to her sister. Her poems deftly illustrate how she navigated these roles until her sister left for a residential school for the deaf at age twelve- a painful separation, but one that enabled both girls to develop as individuals. This perfectly balanced collection is full of love, humor, metaphor, resiliency, and narrative reflection.-Mary Ellen Talley, retired speech-language pathologist and author of Taking LeaveNo eye will remain dry while reading Echoes in My Eyes, Kelly Sargent's poetry collection that tells a story. It is a story where love and protection live side by side with stigma and stereotypes, white lies, misunderstanding, and separation. Written from the perspective of a loving sister, the reader gets a rare opportunity to learn about what it means to grow up as a deaf person in a hearing society and the crucial role that a significant relationship plays in the course of one journey. I believe this chapbook is a must on every shelf.-Gal Slonim, Founder of Beyond Words Publishing House

Shaheen Dil's poems blossom with lush descriptions, from Kennywood, an amusement park in Pittsburgh, to Karimpur, a village in Bangladesh. Her sharp powers of observation peel away the surface layers to get to the heart of the matter, and the matter of the heart. This wide-ranging collection is not afraid to take on larger philosophical issues with honesty, humility and grace, asking questions for which there are no easy answers, like the best poems do. Jim Daniels' recent poetry books includeThe Human Engine at Dawn, Wolfson Press, and Gun/Shy, Wayne State University Press. Shaheen Dil writes with authenticity about what she knows well. From the waterways of Bangladesh to the mysterious engines of Wall Street, this collection traverses a vast range of topics with a unique voice that is no less vigorous than it is charming. In The Boat-maker's Art, the reader will rediscover themes and imagery from Dil's first book, Acts of Deference, revisited and enhanced by her apparently inexhaustible lyrical curiosity.The Bulgarian poet Lyubomir Nikolov is the author of numerous books, translated into seven languages. His latest book is The Wine's Angel, (Fakel Press 2018.) In The Boat-maker's Art, Shaheen Dil displays the whole range of poetics and of her culturally-engaged imagination. Dreamy and full of sensibility, these poems turn with the lightest of touches to reveal the wit and allusion that underpins every description. Dil is a poet who eschews the tired gestures of confessional verse to share with us a deeply-felt view of the human world itself. In her vision contemporary experience is still richly meaningful and connected through myth and religion with past and future human lives.Fiona Sampson, MBE, FRSL, is one of the UK's leading poets and writers. Her work has been translated into 37 languages. Her honors include: the European Lyric Atlas prize, the Naim Frasheri international laureateship, and the Wales Poetry Book of the Year. Earth, air, fire and water. Especially water. "The Boat-maker's Art" is a great poem of our language and sets the tone for the volume of that same name. Shaheen Dil's Bangladesh origins permit her a unique perspective on American life. The Boat-maker's Art is an essential book of poems and reading it is an homage to the human spirit.Michael Wurster is the author of numerous poetry books and a founding member of the Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange. His latest book is Even Then, (University of Pittsburgh Press 2019.)

In Fog Totem, Anne Mitchell takes us on a journey via poetic snapshots of ocean and fog, the pandemic, a divorce, loss of a beloved dog, knee surgery, a fledging daughter, and more...all with humor, musical wordplay, and irony. In these poems, we see tourists who "shiver in their shorts," "pelicans (who) have all the moves," a "dance to the hiss of rattlesnake grass," and the "abalone iridescence of a hummingbird's throat." Vivid imagery and a narrator's perspective that stays with you.-Susan Vespoli, author of Blame It On the Serpent, Cactus as Bad Boy, and One of Them Was MineAs one who often holds her breath for many reasons, reading Anne Mitchell's poem "Breathe," not only got me to inhale and exhale slowly and with pleasure, it got me to reclaim a level of ease and awareness that had fled. "Life will not always go your way./ The bees will disappear from the hive/ and the orange Tomcat will wander off to die/ without leaving a note..." Can't we all recognize ourselves in that? Fog Totem will bring you back to what matters most. These poems will slow you down so you too can breathe more easily and be reminded of what matters most.-Patrice Vecchione, author of My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice: A Guide to Writing Poetry & Speaking Your TruthWith whimsy and wordplay Anne Mitchell scours the attic of a life filled with heartache and hope, all the while rendering the details of everyday life into a poetry of attention. Far from prose that pretends to verse, Fog Totem is poetry in its truest sense and purpose.-Rags Rosenberg is songwriter/poet and artist in residence at The Hofsas House in Carmel, Ca

One can always count on Richard Newman, in his poems and in the lyrics of his songs, to give this tattered world a fair shake but also to give it to his readers strong and straight. In his fine new collection, Blues at the End of the World, even ancient forms are coaxed to sing a gritty, modern ache as Newman tackles topics large and small-abandoned Shinto shrines, new marriage, aging, America's shameful history in the Pacific, how living many years abroad changes a person-in masterful haiku, tanka, and haibun tucked among the sonnets and free verse. Few poets could so viscerally conjure the Saigon smog as a speaker lifts his baby "to the blood orange dawn, / baptizing [him] in beauty frothed with poison," or make a dead dog beautiful as it floats, bloated, around an island in its "funeral shawl of flies." Blues at the End of the World brims with portraits of loss and stubbornness, with delicate reports of a rough world, hewn by sorrow.-Francesca Bell, author of What Small SoundIn Blues at the End of the World, Richard Newman takes us around the globe and deep inside the human heart. With the memory of an exile, he connects the past and present in surprising ways, weaving personal narratives into lush landscapes that capture the flavor and tang of living in new places. Newman navigates between "unhappiness or hope," with humor and humility, erasing borders as he's crossing them-not a tourist, not a native, he is our ideal guide.-Jim Daniels, author of The Luck of the Fall and Gun/ShyIn Blues at the End of the World, Richard Newman leaves home to find a home, but home becomes a continual journey and exploration of self and love that "take[s] root. . . /and thrives like madness." These well-crafted poems show how rich and full life can be where the sea "slaps itself awake" and a "rainstorm has a soul." It's a time of waking to barking wild dogs, sharing donuts with students where having a donut is "a lottery/we only savor if we're lucky." It's a journey of falling in love all over, getting married, fathering a son, and leaving one country for another-and another-and another, with "no escape from war, /the horror veined through worlds hidden." These poems, studded with a variety of styles and forms, make us all want to join the journey. They resonate. -Maryfrances Wagner, 6th Missouri Poet Laureate

"Make me shout . . ." Daphne Solá writes, in her new collection, A Myth in Reverse, "Make me cry out . . ." These are poems of myth and memory, poems that celebrate a life lived through the senses of allegory and legend, and of what might have been. Solá rejoices in beauty whenever it appears in the fleeting world, "a moment, sweet and stretched, like the neck of a swan." -Peter E. Murphy, author of I Thought I Was Going To Be Okay www.stockton.edu/murphywriting Daphne Solá is one of those spiritual writers that the world particularly needs right now, and she expresses her lifetime of wisdom in magnificent poems that prize melodic detail. You can't stop reading her poems because you want to know more of her fascinating life, and you want to learn how to transform beauty into not-specifically-articulated calls for justice and well-being. She captures the best of the universal in the particular, without ever leaving you out as a particular reader! -Barbara Regenspan, author of The Chessmaster's Daughter and Haunting and the Educational Imagination To read Daphne Solá's poetry is to step outside of oneself and into a swirling world of nature, music, and dance, and above all, passion. Hers is a world vibrant with color and textures sprung from a panoply of experience. Be it living in Latin America, New York City, or in country near Ithaca, the poet, herself a force of nature, is always self-aware, humorous, and unabashedly frank. To the wind flying across her pond, she reminds us: "You have to take me as I am/ wayward/ rebellious/the last free spirit." -Carolyn Clark, author of Watershed-new Finger Lakes poems

Ed Ruzicka takes us through "days of tragedy and joy" illuminating jeweled moments under"a tender rain" when "Beads dangle at the tips off slender crepe myrtle branches." Squalls navigates through the disasters of life on the Gulf Coast of storms and floods and more personal wreckage: "I had something I lost. I want / something others have. Tomorrow / isaround one more hard corner." Yet past the hard corners he looks above to find solace "underthe mammoth / teat of a milky aurora..." So that when he gets back down to earth and itsstorms, a plain fact acquires a grace of humble redemption and humor: "I have this, onewheelbarrow full of rain." This is a man rooted in his life who improbably writes poetry inlove of his daughters, against his losses and upon his joys. I like being in Ed Ruzicka's world.You will too.-Rodger Kamenetz, author of The Jew in the Lotus and The Missing JewNothing is too insignificant-a toddler discovering its tongue or a flattened gum wrapper on apath-to evade Ed Ruzicka's eye, nothing too commonplace to resist exploring. Howeversmall its beginning, each poem in Squalls becomes a flood, a story whose banks can't contain the deluge of its images, and yet a story whose images never slow an inexorable push toward a surprising and satisfying finish. Each of these poems is its own intoxication.-Charles deGravelles author of Billy Cannon: A Long, Long Run and The Well Governed SonFrom a blind, old dog named Pup to a little girl who sings to it, from a house painter falling inlove, to how the homeless sleep, Ed Ruzicka brings a keen eye and a sympathetic ear to therhythms of life and the forms of poetry. Rain and river and raw love flow through the pagesof Squalls. -Joe Cottonwood, author of Foggy Dog and Random Saints

Maggie Yang is a writer and artist from Vancouver, Canada. Recognized by The Poetry Society and the League of Canadian Poets, her work has been published in The Florida Review, Split Rock Review, Booth, among others. Her art appears in The Adroit Journal.

How lucky we are to have A.R. Williams' refined and contemplative poems. Poems that reach well beyond his native Virginia and touch on the universal themes of memory, relationships, and place. Poems that, collectively, share the overarching theme that our lives and the natural world are always in flux. This is expertly demonstrated in the author's poem "Breath Cloud: " "a translucent cluster of cotton / eventuates / and like a ghostly daydream, / vanishes." Perpetual change means that we will all inevitably experience hardship and loss-this means that there is much to fear. Not surprisingly, Williams is discerning and does not leave his readers feeling hopeless. He also offers us poems of renewal. The author concludes by confessing that he has "nothing more pressing to do than...write to [us]" and, selfishly, I hope that remains the case for years to come. I wholeheartedly recommend this strong and stirring debut.-Corey D. Cook, author of Junk Drawer and editor of Red Eft ReviewThe experience of reading A Funeral in the Wild feels like discovering a cherished photo album. A. R Williams creates a series of poised and delicate snapshots, blending family and the pieces of the natural world that mean the most to him. The result is a surprising sense of intimacy, in poems that are tender, questioning and sometimes raw. Among repeated motifs of trees and birds, we trace the roots of a childhood, a marriage and look with vulnerable hope into the future, where dragonflies helicopter above leafy limbs, ripe tomatoes clutch a child's hand at the market, and dandelion seeds are blown into the wind.-Jen Feroze, author of The Colour of HopeA.R. Williams' first chapbook focuses on fatherhood, relationships and personal fragilities, with a bird's-eye view over life in American towns and landscapes. In these lively, short poems, we are presented with witty descriptions-"A red-winged blackbird intonated a hymn, / before flaunting his red and yellow/ shoulder pads and jet-black suit" and a memorably poetic description of tree-bark with its "cracked and ashen armor." The imagist technique employed by Williams has a real focus on craft and economy, ensuring that these spring-loaded poems are both vivid and suggestive, with an emotional undertow, where words are chosen for resonance and not wasted.-Matthew M. C. Smith, author of The Keeper of Aeons and editor of Black Bough Poetry

"We walk together gathering the coming darkness with both hands."In Sandra Noel's What the Pain Left, the poems crystalize through the lens of grief, each poem sharpened by images, story, and insights. This sounds like a volume of long poems and a thick read, but no. Tightly and sparingly, Noel stitches with a golden thread her poems of clarity and depth. She details her life with her husband from young love's first attraction to their rich shared life with its core of marine science and the sea. His cancer diagnosis interferes with their life's flow. They encounter days of watching for hope in the affront of pain, then nights dealing with death, and finally her days turning toward living. These poems call us to a deeper empathy.-Ann Spiers, author of Rain Violent (Empty Bowl), Back Cut (Black Heron), and Harpoon (Triple Series # Ravenna). See annspiers.com.In Sandra Noel's What the Pain Left, we witness the flux and flow of a life passing in clear, forthright language that bares all the complexity of changing weather and temperamental seas. These poems read as vulnerable glimpses into what is a painful and unfathomable journey: the death of a soulmate. As the poems unfold, we witness hints of the poet's continued, independent journey in a life that embraces the natural world which once linked these life partners together in their work and home. A life, like some landscapes, which now "...will never be healed completely but it can be restored enough." Part diary, part love letter, Noel's humor, gratitude, and self-awareness keep these poems honest and truly from the heart.-Katy E. Ellis, author of Home Water, Home Land

Llewellyn McKernan's The Manifesto and Its Blue Ball is a collection of earlier poems(that show the writer feeling and figuring in insightful ways toward a poetic maturity), aswell as more recent poems filled with what Jerome Bruner believes is the central characteristicof creativity-"effective surprise." In "The Manifesto" and the other title poem, "The Blue Ball,"we enjoy the unusual angles the poet takes on her remarkable subjects, and elsewhere we aretreated to surprise and delight not only in the deep meanings and metaphors, but in the deliciousmusic of the poet's language: "Undress the mystery/of summer, savor the fall's skill-killing frost, winter's/grid against the sky" ("Don't Be Down-Right"). These poems are Llewellyn McKernan and we treasure them.-Richard Hague, Author of Studied Days: Poems Early & Late in AppalachiaIn Llewellyn McKernan's The Manifesto and Its Blue Ball, a light, often rhymed, sometimes childlike whimsy veils a series, at times unsettling, but finally affirming view of poetry and nature. In "Here's the Situation," "dawn and noon" and "frog and loon" release their rhymes only to reveal the unique poem that's grounded in its "own/unearthly/unrehearsed howl." In "I Believe," "it's always winter in the Land of Faith," but the poet takes the snow there andmakes it into a "snowman the children love." In "A Real Thing," "a bright green willow/reflected in a pond in summer/is lucid and lovely-But don't try to touch it." Yes, beauty isfragile but powerful. And so is The Manifesto and Its Blue Ball. -Richard Spilman, Author of In The Night SpeakingThis is the poetry of a fully realized artist, driven by faithfulness to her craft and devotion tothe crucial but difficult journey of dwelling in the beautifully stressed shapes of humanexperience or the treacherous and lovely terrain of the imagined places of the mind and heart-both being ultimately a passageway to the life-line of the poem itself, "The Blue Ball," pursued and celebrated in "the duo of space and time/present to our presence," "from which it borrows only what/it turns and returns" to the ready reader's heart. I will keep this smart and lovely collection close always.-George Eklund, Author of The Island Blade

"How could I stand to be so dim where the light couldn't reach me" asks the speaker in one of the opening poems of Jennifer Kelley's debut, Coming to Love My Darkest Places. With a fine-bone intellect and a crystalline voice, the poems in Kelley's collection interrogate this question more deeply with each page. Like the bouts of epilepsy described in the first section of the book, Kelley's work arises out of affliction-the feelings of being overtaken, stricken, possessed, in this case by addiction, mental disorder, and the reverberations of abuse. But the alchemy of the poems is to transform suffering into tenderness, loss into vision, grief into acceptance. At center, the book explores timeless questions of suffering, redemption, and the divine. "We cannot claim the infinite," Kelley writes. And this is the essence of these poems: Divinity is not something one acquires. Rather, the infinite is found in everyday wonder, the overlooked images, the contour of an interior life, accessed in these poems by the poet's honesty, humility, and stunning powers of observation. -Kim Young"In these stutter-stop times" Jennifer reaches into landscapes of belief and love and creation. She explicates our duplicities and our evasions. With honesty and with a poet's pungence. She not only reveals who she is, she reveals who we all are. I travel with her. It is a comfort. -Ann BuxieWith these poems, Jennifer Kelley masterfully addresses the struggle of who she is and what it has taken for her to be here. "I want to shrink / and grow at the same time. / And I couldn't be a noose, not with Jesus watching." Coming to Love My Darkest Places is a poetic journey of what acceptance is and the struggle to claim an identity that is outside of what is okay. "An atmosphere/ of hope and wish / of bait and switch / of swing and miss." Kelley lets us in on this journey of what it takes to negotiate, survive and grow in this world where everyone is supposed to be the same. "Ancient and full of dreams, we talk only about the weather." In this tome, the poet claims and reclaims her voice. These poems are strong, sometimes funny, well written, and vulnerable. Kelley's work is both beautiful and stark. The poems in Coming to Love My Darkest Places tell us they are here with us in this world. In this realm of poetry. They struggle towards joy.-Phil Taggart

To read the poems in Gregg Friedberg's WHAT'S WRONG is to discover a voiceunlike any other in its dizzying ability to address serious matters-love, desire, loss, belief and radical un-belief, to name a few-surprisingly, with joyous invention and indefatigable wit. The supreme ironist who isthe speaker of these poems consoles his tormented soul handily with verbalwizardry. Grief, he says, is "a mediocrity" so he dresses it up and makesa party of it all. His is a dark vision, to be sure, but in that darknessthere is no dearth of colorful illumination to pick up our spirits.-PegBoyers, executive editor of Salmagundi, author of The Album, To ForgetVenice, Honey with Tobacco, and Hard BreadRarely has formality of language achieved such intimacy-in these linkedpoems-the questing speaker, in reaching towards the other, begins toknow himself. "Can I infallibly distinguish the artificial from thenatural?" Indeed! Yet nothing surpasses the beauty of the language, itsmusic, its dance on the page, its lush sensuality.-Lee Gould, editor of La Presa

If Einstein had attempted serious poetry, I imagine it might have resembled some of the poems in That Which Is Everlasting. Kyle Singh journeys to the land of light and shadows, life and death, space and time. It is little wonder that he is a physics scholar. But also a mystic, whose poetics are marked by phrasings that capture the paradoxical fabric of matter and spirit: "the integral substance is changing all the time/changing so it's not integral." Whether it be an ant, a fawn, a dog, cattle, or even the wood used to make a death vessel, the target of Singh's gaze becomes a doorway to other dimensions. What a fascinating mind. I can picture Einstein reading these lines concerning the nature of time and identity, and smiling with poetic envy: "All moments are imitators of other moments/An affirmation is a continuation of an infinite series/I am a replica of a miniature figurine."-Neil CarpathiosIt was a pleasure to have joined Kyle Singh- a very gifted young poet (major field of study: quantum field theory!)-on his mindful poetic journey through his earlier years and, occasionally, well beyond them. The reader explores with him some of the astonishing details, both metaphorical and literal, he's encountered along the way: some are as clear and precise as "To Befriend a Cow," and others are more ambiguous, and consider such matters as EXAMPLES-virtually impossible to paraphrase here. I therefore encourage you to read this impressive collection in its entirety. You'll find it enlightening, and often unabashedly beautiful.-Marilyn L. Taylor

Pitching for the Apostates engineers a perfect circle within that metaphysical realm we call the poem. What initially appears and/or sounds conversational veers to verse in that its immediacy, its swift movement, is subtly arrested by humble expressions of revelation, due to the extraordinarily reverent care and exacting craft with which Hostovsky animates experience, making each poem with its perfect pitch a kind of medium of telepathy.-Karl Elder, author of Alpha Images: Poems Selected and NewPitching for the Apostates feels like having an intimate conversation with a very close friend. Written in his seemingly effortless style, Hostovsky's poems disarm with their natural-sounding speaker's voice. "Now I would rather remember life than live it," he says in the opening poem, and remember life he does-in heartfelt poems full of bliss and sorrow, confusion and bemusement, spiced with plenty of humor and wordplay. By the time we get to the last poem, "about the warm tears/of old men, /tears that bless everything, /help nothing, no one," we know we do, in fact, need the help of many more poems from this compulsively readable poet.-Peggy Landsman, author of Too Much World, Not Enough ChocolateHostovsky's trademark hospitable-with-a-sting style, his capacious invention, the ease of his craft, and his always rich humor are on full display in Pitching for the Apostates. His magpie mind is seemingly able to find a poem in anything-poems full of deepening turns and a restless resistance to the pat answer or any too-tidy closure, poems about their subjects and so much more than their subjects.-David Graham, author of The Honey of EarthPaul Hostovsky is our heartfelt story-teller poet, our risible raconteur of daily life, ourfaithful chronicler of "So what happened next?" In this his thirteenth book of poetry, the overwhelming sense is of a poet in love with memory, and a poet in love with language, who keeps finding new ways of taking us with him by the hand and leading us back, putting us under the spell of his own personal Mnemosyne.-Carl M. Jenks, Poetry Corner

"Make rivers flow / out of my mouth," Jonathan Koven asks of the blank page, and his poetry answers with a beautiful deluge of visions, of dreams, of the great and ancient things. Here are poems that go their own way. Here are poems that "cross state lines to reach you." Here, refreshingly, are poems that know how to be both a story and a song.-Joseph Fasano, author of The Swallows of LunettoJonathan Koven's Mystic Orchards is full of lush and palpable language, meant to be read aloud and savored. This hybrid collection weaves poetry into prose, and its form mirrors the unbound answers to the questions Koven poses: What happens at light's end, at life's end? Who do we meet there, and who could we become? And is it possible to rewind it all back to a beginning? Throughout, Koven meditates on love as both memorial and omnipresent, including both our embodied and metaphysical connections to the span of experience, from the macrocosm of nature to expertly distilled moments in his own hometown and poignant childhood memories . . . Koven ultimately suggests that the answers to all of our questions lie in listening: to the echo of self, to the love in our lives, which are both, in their own ways, infinite.-Alison Lubar, author of Philosophers Know Nothing About Love, queer feast, sweet euphemism, and It Skips a Generation"Everywhen" is a word used throughout Jonathan Koven's Mystic Orchards, an apt theme as memory flows through bloodlines and blossoms alongside crisp descriptions of the natural world. This dreamlike collection takes the reader on a journey through a catalog of intense evocations-"a map / in a January memory," "a stunted boy listening to trees," and "the cry of your hometown's train" . . . There is intense power in the delicacy of Koven's language as he alternates between poetry and ethereal prose on the border of dream and reality, ultimately reminding us that despite it all, "Life remains / in the still image."-L.M. Camiolo, editor and founder of Impostor: A Poetry Journal

With his fourth full-length collection, Marc Frazier has provided us with "a design for living." In a world that is quick to destabilize subjective experience, Frazier creates a second world of dramatized human experience by weaving personal history with artistic ancestry. Part meditation and part ekphrastic, Frazier has collaged a mixtape of wonder and wonderment. If "the loneliness inside you is deeper than the sea," then this book is a salve. Through conversation with other poets, painters, film makers, and musicians, Frazier proves that poetry and art are explorations of lineage and their enduring influence echoes up from the past into the present to direct and console us.-John McCarthy, Author of Scared Violent Like HorsesIf it Comes to That concerns itself with a wide range of our human experiences, whether they be"the children/ who have disappeared to mirror the earth," a man petting the slope of a horse's forelock, our nation pondering bullet proof blankets for children, or small boys discussing whether the Klan might target Catholics, Frazier invokes compassion. His readers may find themselves contemplating art, literature, artists and writers. They will confront suffering. But, always they will return to where "our better selves sing/yes, they sing."-Eileen Cleary, Founder, Editor-in-Chief, Lily Poetry Review and BooksIf It Comes to That is a collection that thoughtfully considers the human condition. The poet shares deep reflections on the creative spirit, on the archetypes that encapsulate our behaviors, and on our relationship with the natural world. One can't help but see the connections that emerge while reading these poems-there are big questions of how we're connected to the people who inspire us and the ways in which we're tied to the past. However, these poems are also filled with the people who we touch simply and softly, hand to hand, finding a way through uncertain times. -Aaron Lelito, Founder, Editor-in-Chief, Wild Roof Journal

In Meet Me Out There, trees don't threaten to topple in a storm; instead they "bend to bless you" in Shutta Crum's sunny new chapbook. Her poems are delightful excursions into language as well as life.-Enid Shomer, Florida Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing, 2013Shutta invites the reader to join her on a passage. Like a line from her first poem, Meet Me Out There, this collection of poems strings together "wet footprints trailing through fields," each an authentic, still-moist impression leading to another. She conjures out of Africa our "First Mother," from maples thrumming cicadas, from within "where pools are memory deep," and colors with "impatient greens and heart-deep browns." She shows us how sublime an ache can be, and the constancy of love in a grandfather's dimming. She is playful and reverent about feelings, especially in "One Winter's Day." Shutta does not shy from grief, but also does not wallow in it. She finds the meaningful objects and people that bring living to a place of understanding and heart. She doesn't paint a hopeful dawn, but Shutta offers her hand through her poetry as both solace and encouragement. I get this book. You should too.-Mark Andrew James Terry, Editor, Of Poets & Poetry

The poems in Marjorie Moorhead's Every Small Breeze are attuned to weather and seasons, both those in the concrete world and in each person's interior realm. As I spend time with these poems, I feel in the presence of a friend who takes me with her on a walk through grief and its antidote. "Make sure to crane my neck, raise my gaze," she instructs herself, "notice, locate, love." This is a human and humane collection which carries us into emptiness but directs us toward joy.-Diane SeussMarjorie Moorhead's poems reveal a striking intimacy with the world around us, and are grounding in the most literal sense of that word: they bring us back to the body and its rightful place in nature. As she writes so wisely, "Relationship with land can be just a road/claimed with each footstep." Reading these poems, we feel the physicality of that claim, and a call from Moorhead to savor all the priceless "small moments" that come our way, even as storms press in from every side.-James CrewsIn Every Small Breeze, Marjorie Moorhead offers the reader an ode to the sacredness of bearing witness to small things: sumac, purple asters, chickadees, birds gathering at the feeder, falling acorns. Bringing forth smells and rhythms through close attention to nature, these poems chronicle how the poet continually finds a way to live within adversity. And though the reader knows she lives with HIV, the poems barely mention the word itself. Instead, they offer everyday tools, small moments that add up to a "death sentence amended," as the "countless ways this virus steered" her pathway. The poems comprising her "coronavirus diary entries" are strewn with fears of death, but also bring forth the ordinary miracle of being alive. And throughout, small things echo larger ones: how a bruise from a blood draw recalls tracks of the past; the stunning way harsh raindrops evoke bullets in both sound and form; how falling leaves and changing seasons mark a life.-Risa DenenbergMarjorie Moorhead's poems reveal a lively mind, conjuring images, touching on yearnings, injustices, and hope, steadily inviting us to sense the natural world with clarity, grappling with the randomness of survival, and grieving what is beyond our control. As facilitator of a women's writing circle, what a pleasure it was to find I'd been witnessing the creative process of a poet who will hopefully gift us with quietly powerful and insightful poems for years to come.-Pamela Broadley

In If the Darkness is Lacking, Royer provides a powerful commentary on gender-based violence. Weaving anecdotes with timeless imagery, Royer highlights the feral nature of abuse and the vivid terror of womanhood. The ramifications of violence manifest in remnants of a life forever changed: from cell phone data to the haunting echo of a final scream. For the women in these poems, intimacy provides no guarantee of safety. In this moving collection, Royer skillfully crafts a world as dark and unsafe as the one we live in.-Mirabel, author of The Vanishing Act (& The Miracle After) Intimate and volatile, Royer's words engulf you without you realizing. You sit up, rapt with attention, and find that for a while you've been holding your breath. The entire thing reads like one long whispered secret, either as an escape plan, or a battle strategy on reclaiming a piece of the world for yourself as someone in need of a community flush with swords and shields and empathetic understanding.-Elijah Noble El, author of The Age of RecoveryIf the Darkness is Lacking maps the pained histories and terror in Royer's studies of social work and her lived experience. Here, we delve into the ghosts, reflections, and shifting perspectives of a collective wound. By uncovering stories of sexual trauma and domestic violence, there is a horrific realization that these victims (and their perpetrators) could be anyone-and still might be. Royer counts the ways this grief can ripple through coping skills: hibernation, a search of faith, a fear or curiosity of death, then cuts right to the source, writing, "Most hauntings don't begin at home; they start in the ground before it was built." If the Darkness is Lacking bravely holds a speakerphone to each scar. As Royer pens "what it is like to be a woman, howling without any sound," this work thoughtfully acts as a refuge, a cautionary warning, and most powerfully, a story spoken with thunder.-Schuyler Peck, author of You Look Like Hell

In her debut and final collection, Marilyn K. Moody's Gothic sensibility delivers mystery as it brings the reader into a complex and dangerous Midwestern landscape. Unique to this work is the way Moody portrays the child's point of view. Flat Land is a construct of extremes: heat and cold, silence and sound, abundance and poverty. The trauma of the family looms despite its many caregivers: mother, father, siblings, friends, uncles, and aunts. Filled with organic imagery-mourning doves, quail, corn fields, lady bugs, wind, and snow-the world of these poems holds an endearing child who remains isolated: "I smell the sweet tobacco from where I sit alone on the old swing set." (Red Metal Lawn Chairs). Ultimately, Flat Land asks the reader to redefine the meaning of home long after she's left it.-Judith SkillmanMarilyn K. Moody's Flat Land is the epitome of holding a deep sense of poetic place. Her work allows us to enter the lives of a constellation of people living on the Illinois prairie. Marilyn's poems transport the reader into a sometimes surprising and not so simple rural Midwestern world. Embedded in the poems is a shifting "I" as we go in and out of people's stories and experiences. Organic imagery such as mourning doves and quails, fields and tractors, sounds and silence, and the deeply bitter cold thread the manuscript. Flat Land asks us what the larger meaning of "home" is while preserving an intimate focus on the individual. It's a joy to sit in each poem, and an honor to know Marilyn through her work.- HR HegnauerIn Flat Land, poet Marilyn K. Moody invites us into family and community, farmhouse and car rides, and the wide open spaces and secret hiding places of rural Illinois. Reading each poem is a walk with the poet as Moody introduces us to landscapes of love, loss, and at times wry amusement, emotional landscapes that are anything but flat. As poems gently unwind, we become witnesses: the hopelessness of crop failure and rents, child joys of tractor or birthday cake, jagged edges of domestic violence, bird chatter, memories in the cemetery, adolescent ennui of night-driving looking for something or someone, and the lives of Charlie the cat. Along this walk, Moody's poems unfold an evolving self and growing wisdom about the intertwining of home and self. Of memory and homeplace, Moody writes, the sounds "will not disappear, embedded/in bone and breath," and at the end, "pines beckon, corn leaves embrace/the mourning doves, the doves/ still call and call." (Memory Sounds)-Mary Kay Delaney

Don't let its title, Swimming with the Fat Ladies, mislead you. Penned by Debbie Theiss, whose clever tone mirrors humorist Erma Bombeck's, this chapbook shares humor, ironies, fears, and joys of becoming a female senior citizen. In contrast to fat's negative image, Theiss shows it as a positive adjective. In her Foreword, she defines the term as "the best or richest part; superfluity; substantial and impressive, . . ." (The Foreword also details a hilarious scene of a swimsuit fitting.) Then, Theiss dances the reader through poems to which most seniors can relate, such as: "Hip Replacement," "Office Visit" (with a mammogram), "Family Heirloom," wherein she must "wrestle the jam-packed drawer open," and "I Refuse to Go Digital" (about battles with the scale). Along with sharing funny aspects of aging this chapbook still exposes its challenges. Whether thin or not, female septuagenarians would do well by reading it. -Lindsey Martin-Bowen, author, The Book of FrenziesIn Swimming With the Fat Ladies, Debbie Theiss invites readers to join her in discovering the superabundance within each of us. Playful, poignant, and powerful, her multilayered poetry is both personal and eminently relatable. I accepted her invitation, dove in, and what a delightful swim it was! From hot flashes and hearing aids to heirlooms and heroes, Theiss's poems speak of friendship, laughter, love, and loss.-Judy Hyde, author, Heartland Writers for Kids & TeensTheiss's poetry takes us on a life-changing journey. She has an uncanny ability to memorialize meaningful moments, so that we see and feel them as our very own. A farting mom, a departing son, a judgmental daughter, a circle of old friends, a worry about gray ends -these are but a few of the enticing topics she covers in her riveting collection. Her vivid descriptions hold a mirror out to the reader, reflecting our own personal experiences. How well she knows loss and the perils and promises of aging! Yet, how brilliantly she sneaks in humor, wonder, outrage, insights, and celebrations. Plunge in and emerge emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually enriched.-Deborah Shouse, author, An Old Woman Walks Into a Bar

ConfluencePoems are the rhythm of breathing-words of friction and flow.Like water impeded by river bouldersthat wraps around, slides under, glides over.A collection of nasal, sibilant, and plosive bursts, caesuras where voids are filled, thoughts are connected-the spaces in which we feel.We are close, butnot fully harmonious-like slant rhyme.Yet I feel an internal rhymewhich flows through my heart-grist for my mill.I do not wish to grind you, but float in your river.Bathe me in your emotion.Unite us as author and readerof perceived and reasoned balance, not to be divided as on a seesawof pain and ho

Toni Ortner's chapbook, Focused Light from a Distant Star, is a collection of 39 ekphrastic poems and prose poems. Most were inspired by the works "created by women in the last two centuries," says Ortner in her Preface including Natalya Goncharova, Frida Kahlo, Louise Nevelson, Helen Frankenthaler, and Kiki Smith. But men, too, are represented most notably with poems on Pieter Bruegel's The Magpie on the Gallows and Storm at Sea, which concludes with the lines, "The heavy schooner founders in the waves/ We hear the sound of splintered wood and screams."-J. D. Solonche, author of 31 books of poetry and nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize"The poet indulges useless subjective emotions" is what they said of Pasternak, who yet laid bare the soul of half a nation, and so does Toni Ortner who exhumes a rich heritage of half a culture of women artists."They are unknown but they lie in the rough basement, For who else built the stubborn structure of language, And rose against a silent melancholy and a dumb despair?"In an age seemingly content to express itself with emotions, here are relics of the numinous beams and sinews focused from a different star; addressing, challenging, and recharging forgotten or marginalized batteries for the life of our times. This is the reportage of the soul for what we cannot express will oppress us.-Phil Innes, publisher of Vermont Views Magazine