MY KINDRED, Paulann Petersen. Salmon Poetry Press, Cliffs of Moher, County Clare, Ireland, 2023, 108 pages, paper, $14.95, salmonpoetry.com. I read My Kindred in August. I was sprawled on the guest bed in my friend’s daughter’s house in a suburb of Portland, Oregon. Everyone else was napping (baby, grandma, mama). I was basking in the light of […]
LIGHTING UP THE DUFF, Sheila Sondik. The Poetry Box, Portland, OR, 2024, 48 pages, paper, $14.00, https://thepoetrybox.com. I love this chapbook by Bellingham poet and printmaker Sheila Sondik. I read it before publication and wrote one of the cover blurbs. I read it again during the Sealey Challenge in August. And again, today. New delights […]
“Poetry’s work is the clarification and magnification of being. Each time we enter its word-woven and musical invocation, we give ourselves over to a different mode of knowing: to poetry’s knowing, and to the increase of existence it brings, unlike any other.” — Jane Hirshfield, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry I decided this […]
TRAVERSE, Kevin Craft. Lynx House Press, Spokane, WA, 2024, 130 pages, $25, lynxhousepress.com. I’ve known Kevin Craft a long time. We were colleagues at Everett Community College, beginning in 1998, and our bond of poetry drew us into friendship. He was always the star, with awards and grants and travel—including to France each summer to […]