MoonPath Press Authors
[A]
[B] [C] [D] [E] [F]
[G] [H] [J] [L] [M]
[N] [P] [R] [S] [T]
[W]
(index by first letter of author's last name)
Sally Albiso Olympic Peninsula, WA
“I knew the story already, but I rushed through part one, as if it were a who-dun-it, waiting as Albiso in her well-chosen words and poignant images tracks the elusive tumor and its hopeful demise. I knew the outcome already, but, facing her death, Albiso gracefully turns not to what will happen, but to every direction the soul travels as it lives and contemplates. In heightened language, she explores angels and birds, trees and light, Judaism and flight, letting each beloved experience count. The last poem reflects on lines from Neruda to lift us finally into ‘a radiance that can’t be subdued.’”
—Alice Derry, author of Hunger
Sally Albiso Olympic Peninsula, WA
"Relationships, nature, art, love, loss, and beauty—all come to the forefront in the exquisitely rendered poems of Sally Albiso's Moonless Grief."
—Lana Hechtman Ayers, author of Red Riding Hood's Real Life
Marci Ameluxen Whidbey Island, WA
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Marci’s Lean House interrogates the relationships in a woman’s life, especially between mother and daughter,
and the way these connections ravel and unravel one’s sense of being. Her stark landscapes and poignant portraits of
loved ones demonstrate the thoughtful, attentive nature of the writer.
—Jeannine Hall Gailey, author of Becoming the Villainess & She Returns to the Floating World
Read an article by Barbara Lloyd McMichael the Bellingham Herald mentioning Lean House.
James Bertolino Bellingham, WA
“Just as the bright rising sun can enter the darkness of a storm, these poems shine close devotion’s light on mystery, enigma, on any talisman cherished for meaning. Bertolino finds an object, a moment, a rich confusion and makes it useful, revelatory, and intimate. Read this book to savor his generous mind embracing the disparate offerings of daily life, and to find in your own circumference of attention a chance for small and precious miracles.”
—Kim Stafford, author of Singer Come from Afar and Oregon Poet Laureate Emeritus
“Bertolino's new collection is a luminous offering of meditations and reflections. In Sun Rising into Storm, we discover that ordinary life, when observed through the lens of an exceptional poet, is filled with the radiance and tumult of dawn emerging to dispel the darkness of ominous skies. Masterfully wrought, these poems impart Bertolino's thoughts with an intimacy and generosity that gives the effect of being caught eavesdropping on his mind, only to be graciously invited in to listen."
—Rena Priest, American Book Award winning author of Patriarchy Blues and Washington State Poet Laureate
James Bertolino Bellingham, WA
Ravenous Bliss: New and Selected Love Poems
“For more than four decades, James Bertolino has been writing love poems, poems of bliss so musical and urgent, so nuanced and bold, they’re ravenously ecstatic. These love poems ‘…draw nectar/ from the fractures….’ They join ‘…all small and large lives with what lifts/ us toward the sun….’ What a boon to have Bertolino’s love poems—both selected and new—in this one luminous collection.”
—Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate and author of Understory and The Voluptuary
Caroline Boutard Gaston, OR
“After decades of intimacy with the turning of the earth and its seasons, Caroline Boutard has given us a book brimming with an ancient wisdom. In these poems our harried modern lives can slow down and remember the blessed comings and goings of all things. We can learn again what it means to grieve and celebrate in the same breath. Because we must. Trust this voice, ‘dumb on sun and sugar,’ to sing you into now and whatever comes next.”
—Rosemary Catacalos, Texas State Poet Laureate Emerita
Anita K. Boyle Bellingham, WA
“Anita K. Boyle’s lyrical poems, ‘soak up the earth’s sweet music in the afterlight.’ She cracks open the world to offer us ‘a spiraling nebula / a minuscule universe… a helix of tiny suns’ to clear away the gloom. She talks to us of waves, and sand, and gratitude; shows us ‘a hand-held miracle.’ In her clear, bright voice the poet sings, ‘an ineffable tune, / lovely enough to be unending, / and final.’”
—Rena Priest, author of Patriarchy Blues
Anita K. Boyle Bellingham, WA
This inaugural MoonPath chapbook by Bellingham, Washington poet and artist Anita K. Boyle thoroughly embodies the exquisite quality of voice our press envisions. What the Alder Told Me is a collection of wise, funny, thought-provoking poems composed of taut, effervescent language, quiet strength, quirky surprise, and unflagging passion. Flowing with natural imagery, as in "paintings with infinitesimal feathers" and "the rhythm of horses chewing hay," Boyle's breathtaking observations captivate. And Boyle’s unparalleled Weltanschauung is evidenced everywhere, as in the section head where she informs us "Seagulls are either sitting or flying some other place to sit." In the poem “Autumn Count,” we are apprised, "One counts on the ones who rise," and here readers can count on this rousing, incomparable verse for a transformational experience.
Ronda Piszk Broatch Kingston, WA
"Smart and spirited, playful and intimate, Ronda Piszk Broatch's Chaos Theory for Beginners probes the patterns and
uncertainties of our daily lives for the vast solar systems within us, inviting, into our human relationships of grief,
wonder, and desire, the cosmos, 'tumbling/ its spent fireworks, blowing confetti/ under our door.' Reading these poems,
I am re-ignited with possibility, reminded how the matter and movements of our lives, small as they are, are as exquisite
as the complex galaxies, as brilliant and limitless as the stars.
—Jennifer Elise Foerster, author of The Maybe-Bird
Ronda Piszk Broatch Kingston, WA
Some people get up every morning and go out into the world looking for God.
Ronda Broatch does this and gives us her field reports in poems that make us want to believe that
faith and survival are one and the same. She is a poet to be thanked.
—Rebecca Wells, author of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Little Altars Everywhere,
Ya-Yas in Bloom, and The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder
Jennifer Bullis Bellingham, WA
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In Impossible Lessons Jennifer Bullis entwines a Stevens like wit and attention to the music of words with a
contemplative eye towards both nature and family. She makes the mythic and the domestic sing. Her language is both direct and
incantatory circling through the great human paradox of our animal flesh and our spiritual ascensions. These poems give pleasure
to the ear and to the heart as their kind and trustworthy voices present the natural world of the northwest, and the possibilities present
to an intelligent, engaged mind moving through both “blossoms and smoke.”
—Jeremy Voigt
Read a review of Impossible Lessons on the Brainripples blog.
Read an article by Barbara Lloyd McMichael the Bellingham Herald mentioning Impossible Lessons.
Judith Waller Carroll Hillsboro, OR
“Judith Waller Carroll’s Ordinary Splendor evokes the magic of everyday living with direct language as well as incisive metaphors and similes: ‘the heron’s long neck pointed like a compass needle.’ ‘Such a fuss about the stars,’ writes Carroll, a poet who sees clearly the many miracles that are often overlooked but who concludes that ’at the end, / this is what I will remember.’ Imbued with insight and questions that celebrate a lifetime of experiences, these poems explore the ache of living with wide open eyes: ’Yes, I know. Somewhere, someone / is doing unspeakable things to another’ but also with understanding that there is so much more.’”
—KB Ballentine, author of Edge of the Echo and The Light Tears Loose
Ansley Clark Olympia, WA
In Bloodline, Ansley Clark navigates the body's systems as a legacy that comes to us in the shadows. A woman belongs "to everyone" as she reads the world around her, its systems and signs, and understands the way fate is inscribed from within. I startled at each poem, the wild complexity and fortitude of language, and the fragility of a speaker mired in longing. These are poems I want to keep near, return to, speak out loud as incantations.
—Ruth Ellen Kocher, author of Archon / After
Joanne M. Clarkson Port Townsend, WA
Port Townsend poet and nurse Joanne M. Clarkson’s words, inspired by mountains, seashore, and especially her patients, have been honored in anthologies and journals, danced in a palace and engraved in stone near the Washington state capitol.
T. Clear Seattle, WA
“In T. Clear’s exquisite debut collection, A House, Undone, we consider what home is. From ‘a house of scant beginnings…raveling sweaters/and unpainted stairwells’ to the bodies we inhabit to ‘roaming the frozen fields…small enough to enter a honeyed hive,’ these striking and precise poems lead us through the hallways of the temporary. Whether the ‘wife/wanted out of the couplet’ or beneath a ‘sky scrubbed-clean of mudsock grey,’ Clear is a master of the image, the narrative arc, and the details of a story. Well-crafted, engaging, and constructed with meticulous care, A House, Undone becomes the beautiful architecture for poetry, where we live in a house of words on ‘a bed littered with leaves,/starlight for a roof.’”
—Kelli Russell Agodon, author of Dialogues with Rising Tides
Glenna Cook Puyallup, WA
Like Joy is Glenna Cook's third book. She shares with us her determination "to live life fully and purposefully"
in her thoughtful and carefully crafted poems. Whether she is writingabout the childhood wonder of mistaking a hummingbird
for "the biggest bumblebee I ever saw," or current affairs, her poems are direct and honest-wisdom distilled from living
through loss and joy. "Life doesn't promise a picnic in the park at the end," she asserts, but "I haven't forgotten how to laugh."
—Sharon M. Carter, author of Quiver
Glenna Cook Puyallup, WA
“When I read Glenna Cook’s poems, Aaron Copland’s music plays in my ear. Her
portrayal of life is simple, universal, and unnervingly complex. Cook’s Shapes of Time is
an arc of a woman’s life, a life shaped by traditions and rhythm, a mirror of reflection.
She gives us a litany of thanks, expressions of disappointment, unimaginable grief,
unbridled joy, that in the end are unfinished—life cut short, for it is never long enough.
We understand how she ‘will leave behind a long/list of books I wanted to read/friends
I could have shared/pie...’ She compels us to ask don’t all want to share pie, to embrace
life, its complexities, in the simplest, yet most poignant language?”
—Josie Emmons Turner, Tacoma Poet Laureate Emerita
Glenna Cook Tacoma, WA
“Readers of the book Thresholds will experience what Glenna Cook calls ‘the good purpose,’
the intention of poems meaningfully conflicted between fierce moments and tender moments that compose a life.
In all her wisdom and experience, she still struggles to answer questions about love, devotion, loneliness
and ‘this grandeur of the universe.’ These carefully constructed poems share childhood pains and shames.
Like any poet, Cook plays subordinate to language: ‘I’m sorry/about my words./I try to keep them in/behind
their white picket fence,/but they get out when I least expect it.’”
—Allen Braden, author of A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood: Poems
Thresholds was a finalist for the 2018 Washington State Book Awards
Risa Denenberg Olympic Peninsula, WA
“I really enjoyed reading these poems and, because I felt
driven forward by them, read them all in one sitting.
Part of the loveliness of it for me was the expectation of
arriving at yet another arresting line—of being brought
to a halt by something piercingly true expressed finely. I
was also captivated by Risa Denenberg’s contemplation
of that place where our most fundamental concerns as
humans—love, death, aging, sadness, and the mystery
of it all—meet the natural world. I felt myself in the
presence of a great honesty about things that matter,
and in particular responded to the idea that, despite our
existential plight—maybe even because of it—life is a
thing of great beauty.”
—David Guterson, author of Snow Falling on Cedars
Upcoming Reading Dates
-
Sunday, April 23, 2:00 PM.Port Angeles Fine Art Center.
With Carmen Germain.
Risa Denenberg Olympic Peninsula, WA
“Tightly crafted, wise with a quietly passionate heart, slight faith will make a reader leap and marvel.”
—Michael Schmeltzer, author of Blood Song
“It’s as if Denenberg has split open her life and scraped out the interior fruit.”
—Susan Rich, author of Cloud Pharmacy
Alice Derry Port Angeles, WA
“Asking is what our entire country is doing—how to bear up
under the loss of so many, these absences of our dearly beloveds.
These poems answer by more than memory—by joining the beloved
to the present in a way that makes asking itself an answer. An
exceptional mind is at work here, lyrically, and with suppositional
insistence, making a framework in poetry to approach and re-approach
the death and the love—its successes and daily quandaries,
its deep companioning—this is what really makes this book sing.”
—Tess Gallagher, author of Is, Is Not
Upcoming Reading Dates
-
Saturday April 8, 2023, 7pm.In persion reading. Pelican Bay Reading Series, Anacortes, WA.
With Kate Reavey. -
Sunday May 21, 2023, 3pm.Wilderbee Farm Cidery in Port Townsend, WA.
With Kathryn Hunt and Tess Gallagher.
Alice Derry Port Angeles, WA
“Alice Derry’s Hunger is so beautiful, so dense with layers of meaning and the weight of
the unspoken, so rich in its language and rhythm, that the book as a whole just frankly
left me breathless. These are poems of enraged tenderness, of estrangement, of questioning
and seeking, poems of family and childhood, poems of loss and yearning and sustenance.
I could hear in them, see in them, voices and shadows from my own life. I know I will
be returning to this book again and again, peeling back the layers.”
—Molly Gloss, poet and award-winning author of The Jump-Off Creek
C.L Downing Tillamook, OR
To Walk the North Direction by C.L. Downing is a narrative of a life fully lived, stories of deepening
self-awareness and empathy toward the world with a voice free of artifice or self-pity. Downing’s writing blooms
with energy, wit, and honesty. Through each poem, her integrity as a creator is obvious. With a style all her own,
she grants her subjects full reveal without sentimentality, but always through her kind heart, which is why she
can be trusted. Readers will feel their own life experience expand in Downing’s recounting of her time spent paying
concentrated attention to the world.
—Caroline Boutard, author of Each Leaf Singing
Suzanne Edison Seattle, WA
“Suzanne Edison’s gorgeously lyrical collection Since the House Is Burning understands one of the most
important principles of poetry: that it first be a pleasure in language. Of course, these are often bittersweet
pleasures, if a poet is willing to tell the truth of her experience as Edison does here (in this case, as a wife,
mother, daughter; as citizen of a world on fire and a caretaker to many). Musically adept, formally precise, both
clear eyed and unfailingly empathetic in its worldview, it’s a beautiful book—one any thoughtful reader of poetry
will be glad to know.”
—Erin Belieu, author of Come-Hither, Honeycomb (Copper Canyon Press)
Upcoming Reading Dates
- Thursday, June 30, 2022, 7:00pm. Eagle Harbor Books, Bainbridge Island WA. With Kelli Agodon and Michael Schmeltzer.
- Thursday, September 8, 2020, Time TBA. Elliot Bay Books, Seattle WA. With Cindy Veach.
Lois Parker Edstrom Whidbey Island, WA
“Eschewing grandiloquence, Edstrom’s poems take a pensive stance towards the immediate, the ‘ordinary,’
while quietly rooted in the rhythms of the natural world. A master of simplicity, her prosody carries a
balanced, musical, clear stream of language with understated authority. ‘Poetry pinned me to bliss,’ sums up the poet,
in full possession of her craft."
—Lorraine Healy, author of Mostly Luck (MoonPath Press)
Lois Parker Edstrom Whidbey Island, WA
“Lucky readers of Lois Parker Edstrom’s new collection will be treated to
the poet’s exceptional skill in mixing the outer, visible world of nature,
the inner, invisible world of the human spirit, all wrapped in a shawl of
Divine light. Edstrom avers, ‘Truth is always a bit odd. How meaning / may
be found in the midst of chaos if / we listen, open ourselves to the risk / of
what we might find inside. And isn’t this / what art is all about?’”
—Michael Escoubas, Editor and Book Reviewer,Quill and Parchment
Lois Parker Edstrom Whidbey Island, WA
“When a poem inspires you to wander down to your local inlet to view the spoonbills, herons and pied stilts,
then it’s not unreasonable to say the poet has made a connection! Glint is a dazzling three-part collection
containing poems of place, nature and family. Lois Parker Edstrom ferments, shapes and bakes words,
creating an optimal environment for every poem to develop and flourish. Only when it’s reached perfection,
she presents it to us, often with a subtle spiciness which teases the palate at the end of the tasting.
Filled with humour, delicacy, soulfulness, and boldness this collection is worthy of world-wide recognition.”
—Ruth Arnison, curator of Poems in the Waiting Room, New Zealand
Lois Parker Edstrom Whidbey Island, WA
"Suffused with Nature's palette, the aptly titled Night Beyond Black is a delicately
nuanced poetic exploration of shifting darks and lights, sometimes as interpreted by visual artists
(Edouard Manet), other writers (Richard Wilbur) and always originating from her inner impulses.
From Van Gogh's Cafe Terrace at Night where the light makes darkness 'bearable' to romance's
'eating the bread of love' in 'flickering sunlight,' Edstrom showers light infused with her
reflections of familial love as the 'least expected' granddaughter's pressing against the
window at dawn catching 'the glitter of the world, ' leaves her equally spellbound. With this
contemporary re-picturing of the Romantic sensibility, Edstrom's Night Beyond Black enriches us all."
—Whitney Scott, TallGrass Writers Guild President and member of the Society of Midland Authors
Debra Elisa Portland, OR
“Debra Elisa moves joyfully, with gratitude, respect, and generosity in the vast world
she creates in You Can Call It Beautiful. She welcomes us into ‘the circle of friends
who gather/in praise of poetry.’ In this collection, Elisa travels mindfully through
the natural world where she lives, and where she sojourns, to bear witness to ‘the
young/roaming streets of blood,’ and to the creatures whose names we praise with
her—‘Yellow-Billed Cuckoo,’ ‘Malone Jumping Slug.’”
—Willa Schneberg, Oregon Book Award recipient, author of The Naked Room
Roberta Feins Seattle, WA
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“The paradoxes of geography and history--the world's, one's own-- are at the heart of Something Like a River.
East and West, those American polarities, anchor Roberta Feins's collection in a way that allows for layered, subtle poems--maps
to the soul's movement. Self-identity is clear, established in gorgeous lines like ‘Whatever I am/I took from this landscape,’
‘I drive streets which still grid my dreams –‘ One of Feins' poems states ‘Though I live West, My Heart is East’
and the reader senses the tension inherent in that voice, but also the commanding grace with which the poet navigates--kayaks--the range of
waters she has been given. Ultimately, what matters most is the here and now: oar in hand, the poet says ‘All enigmas seem absurd;/I’m in a trance’.”
—Lorraine Healy, author of The Habit of Buenos Aires
Lorraine Ferra Port Townsend, WA
“In Between Darkness & Trust, Lorraine Ferra moves into the dusky rooms of memory, the shaded places of present time, ‘where something is always changing/until changing finally into itself.’ It takes a poet like Ferra, whose careful wordcraft and piercing vision are honed by long experience, to help us recognize that self, and what it can mean in our lives, so that we have ‘Another/day, another/chance to change.’ ‘Trust’ comes from an old Norse word meaning ‘strength,’ like the grandmother she writes of who bakes bread for her family so that they might eat when she lies down to die. Who would not trust such a one?
—Samuel Green, Brooding Heron Press & Bindery
Paul Fisher Seattle, WA
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“The way Paul Fisher sees the world and writes about it is pure delight! An Exaltation of Tongues
is full of astounding images and the wisdom of his shaman voice – ‘from the green blood of grass /
to the moon's missing half.’ I love the nuances, the leaping alchemical word magic, and the vision
in these poems – ‘sweet as stolen honey / ladled from the Great Bear's tongue.’ I love the way his
poems leap between worlds, and the transparency of emotion is stunning. Every line has the magic
I have come to enjoy in Paul Fisher’s writing.”
—Diane Frank, author of Canon for Bears and Ponderosa Pines
Matt Gano Seattle, WA
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Matt Gano, whose swagger and soul and verbal dexterity have knocked out spoken-word audiences for years, brings
his staggering inventiveness to the page—where he also, and absolutely, belongs. Here are irresistible scenes out of the
sagebrush and empty lots of a charmed and timeless boyhood; love from all sides—wild-horse young, and 94 years old; and the
moon: brilliant, unexpected, new, "with … lemon-meringue peaks/ and eating-contest complexion."
These are beautifully-crafted poems, alive with startling transitions, humor, and the wisdom that lets "the rhythm in the ride
be what I write." And they’re pure pleasure.
—Kathleen Flenniken, Washington State Poet Laureate, author of Plume and Famous
Read an article by Barbara Lloyd McMichael the Bellingham Herald mentioning Suits For the Swarm.
Carmen Germain Port Angeles, WA
"The poems in Life Drawing come from a painterly perspective that loves the colors and textures of life.
Germain's sensibility is generous: 'I rummage things of childhood/ to find lost blessings' and 'What is given astonishes.'
A central tension of the book is the way she grapples with life's hard paradoxes: truth versus embellishing, salt versus
sugar, blood and bone versus soul. It's a poetry that embraces the ordinary and sees art as a way to both praise,
and make sense of, the world."
—Joseph Powell, author of The Slow Subtraction: A.L.S.
Upcoming Reading Dates
-
Sunday, April 23, 2:00 PM.Port Angeles Fine Art Center.
With Risa Denenenberg.
Carmen Germain Port Angeles, WA
During her time as a visiting artist/scholar at the American Academy in Rome, she researched the work of post-war novelist Elsa Morante; some of the poems in The Old Refusals had their genesis in Italy. Germain’s work is influenced by Italian/American culture, especially the Little Italy that was once alive in the South End of Albany, New York, as well as Upper Midwest farm culture and the wilderness of northern British Columbia. Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico has a presence in her work. In addition to learning from poetry, she is also a visual artist.
Tim Gillespie Portland, OR
Old Stories Some Not True and other poems
“‘With poetry around me,’ writes Kalia Kao Yang in The Song Poet, ‘the entire world is a garden of meaning.’
This is my sensation as I read Tim Gillespie’s poems, for they are rooted in a life enriched by reading the world
through a teacher’s eye: what lessons yearn from this old book, this rusty story, this vagabond street, this twinge
in an old heart quickened by a young life? His ways of seeing and saying reveal a hunger for meaning, apprehending,
reaching through surface for grit. An errand becomes a quest, and homecoming a mythic venture. What was simple grows
deep, and what was overlooked becomes vivid. Read these poems, and enter the garden of meaning.”
—Kim Stafford, Oregon Poet Laureate, author of Wild Honey, Tough Salt
Neile Graham Seattle, WA
The Walk She Takes is an idiosyncratic tour of Scotland, where a mile’s walk contains remnants from the Stone Age through to the present, all in fragments of standing stones, cairns, souterrains, brochs, abbeys, castles, tenements, and crofts. These poems explore how the layers of time in these evocative sites reverberate through our own journeys. They delve into how even dark histories sharpen connections with places—and deepen knowledge of what our past makes us, helps us see how to travel forward into alien and familiar biographical and natural geographies.
Joseph Green Longview, WA
What Water Does at a Time Like This
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“Whether figurative or down to earth, Joseph Green’s diction is apt. And
his imagination ranges over ‘the slope behind [his] house,’ a garden in
Marrakech, ‘little sparkles in the infinite dark,’ and—it would seem—all
the spots along the way. If Green does anything better than making routine
seem magical, it is making the extraordinary appear commonplace. Or
maybe it’s the other way around. Either way, What Water Does at a Time Like
This is a wise and beautiful book.”
—Knute Skinner
Joseph Green Longview, WA
That Thread Still Connecting Us
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This new book by Joseph Green reminds me of the “handyman” quilts my grandmother used to make.
Her genius lay in finding just the right pieces from old jeans, shirts, dresses, blankets, and arranging
them in extraordinary order, carefully sewn, so that the whole and the parts were both something new.
Green knows precisely what threads to use, where to tug, and how hard. These are, ultimately, poems of
redemption, forgiveness, understanding, the scraps of a life saved up, puzzled over, and
put to use, finally, with love and care.
—Samuel Green, Inaugural Poet Laureate, Washington State
Lorraine Healy Whidbey Island, WA
“‘Father Pablo, lord of the elemental,/your Odes my atlas,’ Healy writes as invocation and homage
to Neruda as she begins her book of praise. And what praise it is, inclusive and democratic, solemn
and humorous, touching upon time, weather, mythology, fauna, peaches, garlic, and even butterscotch
pudding, as she reminds us how ‘the whole universe exists so it can be sung to. Even sorrow.
Even guilt.’ Insistently affirmative and endlessly inventive, Healy channels praise through
sound and syntax, and through a precise and intensely curious gaze.”
—Michael Waters, author of Celestial Joyride and Gospel Night
David Hecker Bainbridge Islan, WA
“David Hecker’s Dream World is a magic carpet ride with poets and artists. Through illuminating landscapes,
enjoy Whirling Dervishes dancing to drums and string instruments, along with his tribute to Pablo Neruda’s
La Chascona, ‘The sections of his home were like the stanzas of a poem.’ Of Denise Levertov, he writes
‘We both laughed when I told her I was a “retired” catholic, a faith she had just joined.’”
—Sue Hylen
David Hecker Bainbridge Islan, WA
Evocative poems beckon one to follow in his footsteps through the territories of youth and age, across the
varied landscapes of Puget sound, Dakota prairies, and Iceland. Along the way, artfully rendered images
capture the spirits of the characters who inhabit these poems, offering thoughtful reflection on the heart
and human experience.
—Kristen Gard Hotchkiss, Bainbridge Island poet
Cindy M. Hutchings Auburn, WA
featuring black & white photos by James Rodgers
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Remember that summer day when a shaft of sunlight spackled on the white wall next to you; shadow of Poplar leaves,
moved by a breeze, danced through the laced curtained window holding you rapt. Simple, delicate, beautiful ... compelling.
TreeTalk is a thoughtful and contemplative work, and a delicate and heartfelt response to a chaotic world.
—Philip H. Red Eagle, author of Red Earth - A Vietnam Warrior's Journey and the originator and co-founder of The Raven Chronicles.
Chris Jarmick Kenmore, WA
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Not Aloud presents some 30 plus years of Christopher J. Jarmick’s marvelous poetry. Jarmick’s thematic territory is expansive--
family, relationships, the art of writing, philosophy, his patented poem starters, and much, much more. His language is musical,
approachable, and memorable. His refreshing turns of phrases stand clichés on their heads: “The clouds/are not metaphors at all./
They hide the sky,/they get fat,/sometimes they burst,/but not with tears,/Mr. Tambourine Man,/just with rain.”
Full of humor, acute observation, and deep emotion, Not Aloud is a collection you’ll want to return to again and again.
—Lana Hechtman Ayers, author of A New Red, editor MoonPath Press.
Jill McCabe Johnson Orcas Island, WA
Through an array of poetic forms, Jill McCabe Johnson explores a deep sense of interconnectedness.
These lyric tangles help us grapple with a life where the ugliest abuses of person and planet occur
alongside a mother's love for her son, the grace of childhood innocence, the anniversary of a first kiss,
and the understanding that "in this land" of "dogwood blossom, swordfern and fen" is "everything"
we need to "believe."
—Derek Sheffield, author of Not for Luck and poetry editor for Terrain.org.
Jill McCabe Johnson Orcas Island, WA
In beautifully shaped, undulant, brief poems (or, one might call them entries in a daybook, bejeweled moments, cries from the heart) Jill McCabe Johnson asserts that the world, specifically the sea, is powerfully alive and available to us by way of the imagination. With precise and lyrical language both scientific and newly created for the occasion, Johnson faces the pain of degradation, yet also celebrates the joyous, nurturing nature of the sea. Diary of the One Swelling Sea is an intimate portrait of elements-become-flesh, rendered by a consciousness and heart large enough, and generous enough, to face the complexity of hard truths.
—Lia Purpura
author of Rough Likeness and King Baby
Read a review of Diary of the One Swelling Sea on Prarie Schooner.
Laura LeHew Eugene, OR
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“Albert Einstein once said pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas. The elegant poems in Willingly Would I Burn
possess such purity, such poetic expressions of logical ideas. These poems blend math and science, presenting poems as word problems for
the complicated times we live in. The grace and strength of Laura LeHew's voice vibrate from every single page.
—Roxane Gay, Co-Editor, PANK
Carol Levin Seattle, WA
“Carol Levin’s An Undercurrent of Jitters is a book of poems about weddings and marriages,
whether longed for or forced or joyfully jumped into, whether failed or extremely happy.
The poems are engaging, insightful, and well-wrought—a joy to read.”
—Priscilla Long, author of Crossing Over: Poems
Upcoming Reading Dates
An Undercurrent of Jitters book launch at the Noric Museum in Ballard, Sunday September 16, 2018. Meet in museum library—such a wonderful room. Everyone welcome.
Doors open at 2:30pm, reading at 3:00pm. Then a party at Carol's place to help celebrate herynew collection An odyssey into facets of the subject of marriage. Within: laws, history, culture, rules, religion, commerce, gender, expectations, outcomes and personal dramas. Secret Garden Books are the host bookseller.
Carol Levin Seattle, WA
Confident Music Would Fly Us to Paradise
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“The wonder of Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince permeates Carol Levin’s Confident Music Would Fly Us to Paradise.
Filled with ‘shadow[s] shaped like a moving octopus: arms and arias,’ the high art of opera cracks opens like a tasty nut at the circus.
A one-of-kind poetic engagement.”
—Karren LaLonde Alenier, author of On a Bed of Gardenias: Jane & Paul Bowles
Sue Fagalde Lick South Beach, OR
Grief. Brave attitude. Small triumphs. “Dear dead
departed husband, / your being dead and departed / is
a major pain in the ass.” The widow senses her husband
everywhere. Wears his shirts. Stacks the logs. Learns
to change a spark plug. Sue Fagalde Lick may make you
weep, make you smile. And then, of course, there’s the
dog. This is a strong book.
—Penelope Scambly Schott, author of On Dufur Hill
Priscilla Long Seattle, WA
"Holy Magic leans into the palette of our days and lays out the case, poem by poem, that the light vibrations that surround us are more than a scientific fact, they enter our bodies, trigger our imaginations, inform our moods, soothe our senses. In 'A Glass of Bitter Ale,' we see the yellow tinge of a bruise, a raincoat glistening with rain and consider the tonalities of pee.
Hues echo and inform each other in these poems, much in the way life experiences paint and
retouch a person's life. Long transmutes life's magic from color to syllables for our delight
in these varied and inventive poems. From the tragic, via the mundane, to the sublime,
Holy Magic hums in technicolor the song of our existence."
—Claudia Castro Luna, Washington State Poet Laureate, 2018-2021
Peter Ludwin Kent, WA
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“In Gone To Gold Mountain, poet Peter Ludwin brings to life the little-known story of Chea Po and his fellow Chinese gold miners, massacred in 1887 by Eastern Oregon pioneers. Ludwin embodies Chea Po and his experiences of breathtaking racism, homesickness, and dislocation. He imbues these persona poems, letters, and laments with the finely-drawn landscapes of Hells Canyon and China, glowing lanterns, and an eagle circling the canyon rim. Chea Po seems to have haunted Ludwin until finally, here, his life and death are told justly. We are the richer for it.”
—Kathleen Flenniken, author of Plume and Famous
Amy MacLennan Ashland, OR
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“Taut with precision and economy, lush with the music of Eros, The Body, A Tree gives us remarkable poems of the body—sensual, strikingly sensate, fully embodied. With Amy MacLennan’s innovative diction and memorable imagery, even the weather—that talk-worn topic—becomes newly alive. A summer afternoon storm is ‘…a hurly-burly jig shaking its way/ across the valley floor—fuss, heavage,/ blinks and streaks, low bellowed tone…” This whole book is a marvelous storm of lust and longing, anticipation and satiation. Reading these poems, I’m both immensely satisfied and pell-mell avid to read them again.”
—Paulann Peterson, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita
Michael Magee Tacoma, WA
“Michael Magee’s Terra Firma: Sacred Ground is a staggering poetic
achievement—a selection of poems written over the course of more
than half a century. These timeless poems are vital to the tenuous
times in which we live. In addition to spanning decades, the collection
spans many thousands of miles crisscrossing the globe. Much more
than a travelogue in verse, Magee offers thoughtful observations and
unassuming humanity. Traversing countless roads from Pamukkale,
Turkey to Tacoma, Washington, we are treated to allusions from
literature, music, painting, photography, drama, film, television,
mythology, philosophy, and history. But perhaps what is most
enjoyable and profound about this collection is the poet’s wise and
witty voice—the voice of a highly educated, creative, and critical
thinker with a cracking sense of humor, someone who has regularly
ridden the bus and trodden his hard-working bones until the soles of
his shoes are holey—a soulful voice who sings for all of us.”
—Lana Hechtman Ayers, author of The Autobiography of Rain
Michael Magee Tacoma, WA
Michael Magee’s plays and poetry have been produced and published in the U.S., England, and Greece. He resides in Tacoma, Washington.
Michael Magee Tacoma, WA
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This chapbook by Tacoma, Washington poet and teacher Michael Magee exemplifies the finely wrought emotional yet deeply intelligent verse our press celebrates. Magee’s voice is sure, succinct and intrepidly sincere. Cinders of My Better Angels illuminates our ordinary lives, depicting how illness makes us not less ourselves, but more so. In this incisive collection, direct, smart, darkly humorous poetry mines the gems of our fragile mortality with courageous, resolute spirit. Through Magee’s superb mastery of craft, the speaker of the poems and the readers become as one, all of us united under the same moon’s watchful eye, afflicted yet determined, ailing yet healing, “hoping for rescue to come along / in the shape of a period.” And as readers, we are moved and fortified by making intimate contact with the world of Magee’s Better Angels.
Brendan McBreen Black Diamond, WA
“Here we have poems of quiet reflection on the natural world of ‘ladybugs and
bees.’ And too, poems with strange turns in which we get off the bus at what may
be the wrong stop to find we have arrived at—Mars? Not to forget well-placed
jabs against bigotry, plastic, guns, and mass shootings, along with ‘radioactive
dreams.’ Brendan McBreen’s The Memory of Water is a rich and gratifying read.”
“Brendan McBreen is a respected stalwart in the Puget Sound area poetry scene. They promote the work of
many fine poets, of which they are one. This new collection The Memory of Water impressively demonstrates
their ability to balance innovative craft, wry wit, and poignant resonance.”
Brendan McBreen Black Diamond, WA
"Brendan McBreen's spare poems in Cosmic Egg combine humor, science, philosophy and life experience in whimsical harmony."
—Jeannine Hall Gailey, author of Field Guide to the End of the World
"See where Brendan McBreen's humour, wit, and honest observation can take you in the cosmos—his and yours."
—Michael Dylan Welch, author of Becoming a Haiku Poet
Kevin Miller Coupeville, WA
Kevin Miller's Spring Meditation is a tribute to baseball in poetry—the majors, the minors, the players, the coaches. It's also a poetic memoir of a life lived with baseball in the foreground.
Sati Mookherjee Belllingham, WA
“Rhythms, images, and juxtapositions in these poems flow like waves filling and emptying, from past to present to what might be—all while glorying in occlusions. Sati Mookherjee’s lively word play questions our definitions, boundaries around spaces, and leads to fresh and original epiphanies…With extraordinary detail, this poet illustrates myriad ‘ways of being.’”.
—Sharon Hashimoto, winner of the 2021 Off the Grid Poetry Prize for More American
Upcoming Reading Dates
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Sunday, April 30, 4:00 PM.Squalicum Boathouse, Bellingham WA [RSVP here]. Hosted by Village Books.
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Tuesday, May 2, 6:00 PM.University Bookstore, Seattle WA [RSVP here].
Jed Myers Seattle, WA
The Marriage of Space and Time
“The vastness and ambition of his title notwithstanding, Jed Myers’ The Marriage of Space and Time is more often than not local in its concerns, even intimate. Such is the nature of this particular marriage, in which we all live. And die. This ongoing here and now. Also then. ‘Our sorrows meet in one shadow,’ he writes; later on, he concludes, ‘I’m old. I’m coming to life.’ Myers aims to see as closely and accurately as he can, and in his seeing, he gives his readers a way to see as well, and thus to be genuinely alive, in our own time and space, for as long as we have it.”
—Robert Wrigley, author of Box and The Church of Omnivorous Light: Selected Poems
Sheila Nickerson Bellingham, WA
Hitchhiking the Highway of Tears
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Poetry exploring both the interior landscape and landscape of the natural world—particularly the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. This is a collection of beauty and loss, relating the interaction of nature and human nature. There is a stunning light throughout these poems.
—Lana Hechtman Ayers, author of Red Riding Hood's Real Life: a novel in verse
Nancy Pagh Bellingham, WA
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“Imagine if your best friend borrowed a coat, then returned it furred, teeth at the cuffs, bull’s eye inked on the back. In Once Removed, Nancy Pagh borrows cadences, images, and inspiration from favorite poets, then deconstructs selected lines, repurposing them to suit surprising new shapes. These poems capture graceful musings, the poet’s clear mind focused on the natural world, but also ferocity unleashed in the aftermath of love.”
—Carol Guess
author of Doll Studies: Forensics
Pattie Palmer-Baker Portland, OR
“The fundamental forces in our lives might include parents, siblings, husbands and wives, lovers, the rain and the sun. As Guns & Roses once sang every rose has its thorn. In this stunning new book, Pattie Palmer-Baker delves deep into these forces with a narrative and lyric force of her own. The poems here are generous, vulnerable, grown-up, and a joy to read. Palmer-Baker is a poet of witness, and this book is a balm for any prick of a thorn you may have suffered in your life.”
—Matthew Dickman, author of Husbandry
Terry Persun Port Townsend, WA
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Terry Persun’s poetry collection, And Now This, tells a beautiful and heartbreaking story from childhood to adulthood full of life, loss, struggle, and a coming to terms with our lives. These poems transport us back in time to Beautys Run and a boy who was too far down stream to be called home. Poem after poem, we bond with the narrator who lives among invisible winds and who lets go of his song in hopes it may fly. Persun’s narrative style comfortably invites the reader into a rural, some-time-ago landscape where we question the actions of fathers while connecting deeply with the son. Because of Persun’s ability to share a story and his honest, poignant tone, I read And Now This in one sitting and found the moments and images in this collection stayed with me much longer than after I had set the book down.
—Kelli Russell Agodon
author of Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room (White Pine Press, 2010)
Joseph Powell Ellensburg, WA
“I’ve never read anything remotely like The Slow Subtraction: A.L.S., Joseph Powell’s deeply loving
collection that tracks how it is to lose the beloved one day at a time. These profoundly beautiful poems broach
the place that Emily Dickinson called ‘internal difference, / Where the meanings, are.’ Honesty is a difficult
art; you will feel its powers grieve and restore you, over and over.”
—Nancy Eimers, author of Oz
Rena Priest Bellingham, WA
“Rena Priest addresses those who crave ‘the meat of beasts with beets and leeks.’
And while she insists that ‘Nature makes you pay,’ her poems tell us that through a
‘wistful song of sighs.’ The world is not always comfortable, but her poems never
‘lose touch with the fluidity of the spirit.’ Patriarchy Blues is an amazing collection.”
—James Bertolino, author of Ravenous Bliss: New & Selected Love Poems (MoonPath Press)
Patriarchy Blues has won an American Book Award for 2018.
Donna Prinzmetal Portland, OR
“Donna Prinzmetal may question how her poetry can possibly ‘measure the distance / between the living and the dead,’
but it does just that and more: many of her poems both measure and collapse that distance, creating a riveting
lyric voice that can fashion ‘the right syntax for grieving.’ With markedly fresh and vivid imagery, she employs
memory's non-linearity, giving us striking elegies, eulogies, and tributes-poems to both her dead and living loved-ones.
Taking us into her confidence, telling us her secrets, Prinzmetal gives us a rare gift. Courageous and movingly intimate,
her voice speaks the poignant music of mortality, ‘the cadence between pain's husky gasps.’”
—Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita, author of My Kindred
Bethany Reid Edmonds, WA
The Pear Tree: elegy for a farm
Packed with a century of images and sensory, sensual detail of Southwest Washington logging, farming, and family, this book transported me across time, place, and generations. More than a collection of poems, The Pear Tree expands these people and this place into an inspirational lament, lifting family and home to epic levels of life and struggle, love and wonder.
—Paul Marshall
author of Stealing Foundation Stones
Tammy Robacker Beaverton, OR
“Tammy Robacker’s Villain Songs poems sing a world of menace into the light. Voyaging through a mythic-seeming land where everyday objects grow treacherous and the most vulnerable among us are used in spirit-crushing ways, she summons her considerable powers of exorcism and refuses to be silenced. With fierce associative play, finely chiseled lines, and a highly controlled sense of form, she dares to speak the hardest truths. If shame is a force that exiles us from ourselves, these poems rescue and reconstitute a home for the soul.”
—Lia Purpura
poet and author of The Brighter the Veil
Matthew Campbell Roberts Bellingham, WA
“Matthew Campbell Roberts gives us poems filled with the music of a bend in the river. His voice is tranquil, steady, and luminous. What a pleasure, to be invited into the landscapes and inner life of this poet, ‘Just to sit on a log and guess at the tide / or scavenge for sea glass and agates / at the edge of breakers. Or do nothing at all / and not worry about the news or work.’ A River Once More is a radiant collection—a refuge on a beautiful shore.”
—Rena Priest
American Book Award winner for Patriarchy Blues
James Rodgers Pacific, WA
They Were Called Records, Kids
“In this exuberant collection of keenly observed poems, NW poet James Rodgers celebrates the
contemporary music scene: the people, the places, the tunes that are the soundtrack of our lives.
Above all, this book is a tribute to the experience of listening, watching, taking it all
in—participating in the act, the fact, the sheer joy of making and hearing music. Rodgers
shares his personal take on the music of Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, Prince, David Bowie, Elvis,
The Paperboys, Sarah Vaughan, and a friend named Mark. This poet/word musician, travels
with us to New Zealand, Ireland, from the Jokhang to the Oktoberfest to Kathmandu, from
The Rainbow Café and Zola’s Café to concert halls and open mic venues where he observes
audiences and individuals with delight.”
—Marjorie Rommel, Poet Laureate of Auburn, WA from 2015-2017
Raúl Sánchez Seattle, WA
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Mexican-American Raúl Sánchez raises his poetic voice in languages twice removed from the indigenous language of his ancestors, but with well more than double the fervor. Language is embodied in the essence of personal and political struggle, as evidenced in these lines from the poem “My Father Was a Bracero”: “He didn’t want me to live / by my strong back, strong arms / but by my words”. This ardent inaugural collection by Sánchez is filled with poems of identity—cultural, familial and personal. All Our Brown-Skinned Angels is part civil protest, part personal celebration, completely impassioned.
Victor David Sandiego Seattle, WA
The Strange & Beautiful Life of Daniel Raskovich
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Victor David Sandiego’s The Strange and Beautiful Life of Daniel Raskovich, an imagined biography of an odd everyman character, is darkly funny and strangely poignant. Sandiego offers a frank take on contemporary society with verse that is clean, clear and direct, and tantalizing enough to keep us wanting more. Episode after bizarre episode leaves the reader feeling off-balance, hopping on one leg (the good one) like Daniel, but perhaps this is the precise vantage one needs to view our lives more candidly. The starkly lovely, sometimes mysterious, graphical images throughout from photographer Ethan Hahn provide visual texture and figurative subtext to the Raskovich tale. As alarming or reassuring as it may seem, Sandiego’s collection reveals that there is a little bit or quite a lot of Daniel in every one of us.
Amy Schrader Seattle, WA
The Situation & What Crosses It
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These sonnets are like spells, like mirrors, as in funhouse—, smoke &—, magic—, and even ceiling— (oh, the delicious, dirty double entendres!). They are sly forms within forms, these sonnets in the Celtic Cross, stories in poems, the made-up in the real, the work of life in a game. In these playful, lovely pieces, Schrader shows us language trying to see and hear itself, admire and rip its own skins. Reading these poems is like reading all the secrets wedged in all the bottles floating in all the oceans, but be careful—they’re stuffed with bits of heartbreak and danger.
—Arlene Kim
author of What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes?
Tamara Kaye Sellman Kingston, WA
“Sellman’s intelligence and experience as a prose writer comes
through in this hybrid manuscript: poems that bristle with scientific
accuracy, prose pieces that border on dreamy intensity and longing.”
—Jeannine Hall Gailey, author, Field Guide to the End of the World
“Intention Tremor approaches the MS odyssey with wit, grace and an inquiring mind that is refreshingly quirky at times.
—Jennifer Culkin, author, A Final Arc of Sky
Tim Sherry Tacoma, WA
"It's refreshing to read a poet who seems to have missed the postmodern memo about serial randomness
being the mind's great roadtrip. Instead, what we get is a boots-on-the-ground empathy from a real
wanderer who has Richard Hugo's eye for out-of-the-way topics and towns, a sincerity that doesn't take
selfies, a heart that can brake for a blue dress or blueberry patch. With a disarming candor, Sherry's
poems examine small moments which can ramify into large questions, humor, self-scrutiny, guilt, love, or praise.
In the end, what the reader gets to examine is the 'archaeology of a life dedicated to the world.'
This book will remind you why you love poetry.”
—Joseph Powell, author of The Slow Subtraction: ALS
Tim Sherry Tacoma, WA
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“With conversational language and stripped-down wisdom, Tim Sherry’s One of Seven Billion is at once intimate and anonymous, revealing and evasive. In a time when many poets seem to value irony and wit, Sherry offers poems that are intelligently solid and emotionally honest. The speaker in many of these poems strikes me as a modern-day relative of William the Poet from the long, allegorical, Christian narrative Piers Plowman of the Middle Ages. He questions without finding answers then accepts that the act of questioning is what each of the seven billion of us must do to exist meaningfully. Posing such impossible questions can be a solitary process but despite the poet’s “instinct for loneliness,” he creates a community where Claude Monet, John Wayne, Lana Turner, and The man Upstairs meet at the center of the universe to celebrate life, love and the imagination.”
—Allen Braden
author of A Wreath of Down and a Drop of Blood
Scott T. Starbuck Battle Ground, WA
“Mindful of environmental degradation, Scott T. Starbuck’s poetry offers those needed songs of redemption, rising from his love of forests, water, and fish. He has composed some of the finest fishing poems I’ve ever read— vivid, pulsing, and honest—with humble, understated humor and insight expressing great wisdom. Exploring the dynamics between the shared and owned, poor and rich, young and old, ghosts and the living, Between River &Street mediates our divisive, troubled times. Like the mythological Raven of the Northwest, Starbuck is a ‘Flamekeeper,’ and his poetry a bright beacon for the wild and sacred.”
—Henry Hughes, Oregon Book Award-winning poet and author of Back Seat with Fish
Scott T. Starbuck Battle Ground, WA
“If you’re a fisherman, then Scott Starbuck is your man. Whether far offshore in a troller or on land far beyond well-traveled roads, Starbuck, as our guide in Lost Salmon, takes us to places where there are 234 local shipwrecks, and trout are being roasted over coals. In poems that are ‘an idea first/rising from nothingness and ashes’ or ‘in a boat/that almost sinks/but doesn’t,’ he asks us to see landscape and seascape through his eyes. Eyes of a true bioregionalist, reminiscent of ecologian Thomas Berry, invite us to journey further.”
—Thomas Rain Crowe
author of Zoro’s Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods
Sarah Stockton Olympic Peninsula, WA
The Scarecrow of My Former Self
“With vulnerability and gorgeous, lush imagery, Sarah Stockton presents a portrait of a life not defined by illness but circumscribed by it; a hybrid life of hospital visits and encounters with crystal healers, coyotes, iguanas. Stockton’s poems of simultaneous rage and grace illuminate the realities of the chronically ill.”
—Jeannine Hall Gailey
author of Flare, Corona (BOA Editions) and Field Guide to the End of the World (Moon City Press)
Carol R. Sunde Westport, WA
In word play and word music, in narratives and lyrics, formal and free verse, Carol R. Sunde shares real and imaginary experiences and observations. She muses about stumbling and dancing through a life full of lessons, losses, gains; times of exaltation, despair, and in-betweens accompanied by peace or boredom, or many tears or much laughter—an ordinary life as unique as each person’s existence.
Carey Taylor Portland, OR
In Carey Taylor's Some Aid to Navigation we encounter not only the life of the poet, the sand and salt and waves
that first touched that life, but through Taylor's masterfully lyrical narratives we get some aid to navigating
our own lives, our own childhoods and losses. Taylor is a poet of both beauty and hardship and those two tides often ebb and flow in a single poem.
This is a book of place and personhood, of family and nature, a book you will pick up over and over again.
—Matthew Dickman, author of Husbandry
Molly Tenenbaum Seattle, WA
“Rilke wrote, ‘The things of this world… seem to need us.’ Molly Tenenbaum,
better than any poet I know, hears the call of things—banjos, clematis, paintings of
chickens—and translates for us their happiness and pathos. She brings this genius to
The Arborists, set in a time of great personal loss and romantic discovery. This is that
rare and wondrous collection that takes my breath—deeply moving, effervescent,
utterly original and alive.”
—Kathleen Flenniken, Poet Laureate Emerita of Washington State, author of Post Romantic
Thomas A. Thomas Olympia, WA
“This is a lush creation of song and scar, of vulnerability and emotional honesty. In
Thomas A. Thomas’s debut collection, My Heart Is Not Asleep, the natural and human
worlds mingle in accessible and poignant ways. Brimming with meditations on the self
and other, humanity and the natural world, these vibrant poems remain grounded in
a universal familiarity that opens us up to something greater.”
—John Sibley Williams, author of The Drowning House
Connie K Walle Tacoma, WA
“In potent poems almost as short as the poet, Connie K Walle covers death, love and the passing tides of time. What’s Left also offers a candid look back at sex in the midcentury that’s as volcanic as ‘the shift of the/tectonic plates.’ This poet has a sparkly wit and penchant for O’Henry endings to keep her readers in suspense.”
—Allen Braden
author of A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood
Julene Tripp Weaver Seattle, WA
There's something going on here. She's done explaining. Done justifying. Done worrying well. She's wailing. Grieving. Believing. Bringing her healing powers. Her nurturing. Her whole wise woman self. Looking unflinchingly at this life. After plagues and pandemics. After war. After global ecological ruin. After injustices. After loss after loss. There's a surge of possibilities: Survival. Gratitude. Incantations. Touch. And most of all: hope.
—John Burgess
author of Punk Poems
Richard Widerkehr Bellingham, WA
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“Richard Widerkehr’s In the Presence of Absence is a book of loss and recovery, grief and wonder. These are poems informed with clarity and compassion, and a quiet lyricism in confronting the mortal world, the death of parents, and life-threatening illness. There is a freshness and ease of manner to Widerkehr’s writing and at times a kind of other worldly aura, ‘that strange gift from the other side.’ There is as well a deep gratitude that infuses these poems, that grounds them in the here and now. He is a poet who has ‘been dealt happiness,/grief, and two wild cards.’ And we are the lucky readers who have been dealt these marvelous poems.”
—Joseph Stroud
author of Of This World: New and Selected Poems
John Willson Bainbridge Island, WA
“John Willson’s poems are guides for wanderers. Such great tenderness and delicacy live in these lines, a softness of presence/absence in the rich fabric of birds, skies, highly attuned relationships woven through time. Mysterious maps of ancestral legacy vibrate as a low hum—people who birthed us, poets who birthed our souls, and the infinite winding roads—with so many meaningful points on the compass, so many homes.”
—Naomi Shihab Nye
author of The Tiny Journalist
Victora Wyttenberg Portland, OR
“What happens to the life of the boy hunting frogs, the father off at war, the mother alone in her kitchen cooking a French dish for the first or hundredth time? And what happens when one’s own mother, father, sister, brother, husband, daughter and son are all, as the poet writes, lying tucked in the dark, alone in their graves? Victoria Wyttenberg gives us a Master Class on how to live and how to grieve in these beautiful narrative poems. Nature is present, family and the death of family, trauma and love, all! Life is hard. What a privilege to be guided through it, at least within these pages, by such a thoughtful, talented, and dynamic poet.”
—Matthew Dickman
author of Husbandry
