Against the Blue by Julia McConnell

Julia McConnell isn’t afraid to dig into the dark side—-yet even in that shadowed land she manages to find cause for laughter, acceptance, hope and celebration. Against the Blue is a deeply compassionate collection, a lovely comfort.

–Kat Meads, author of Quizzing the Dead

Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]

Every poem moves, but Julia McConnell’s poems harness a particular lightening energy born of a season of storms. From the jangled bracelets of hidden cuts to the translucence of a lantern tree, from the accelerator pressed to the floor to the sound of an icy shovel on the grave, these poems show us how to live in the turbulence. I like how McConnell can declare the poet’s failure to do her job and how she can almost despair of touching the true wound, but then finds the perfect lightening rod to keep us alive and moving toward the next horizon.
–Jane Taylor author of “Pencil Light”

Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]

Julia McConnell’s narrator in Against the Blue navigates the worlds of love and loss not in an angry voice but a quiet one, a voice that stops to reflect upon the past, tries to live in the now, and finds herself unable to work out the mathematics of the future. Like the old blind dog navigating the back yard by what she remembers, the narrator of these poems navigates by memory and emotion, each poem, like the pebbles she leaves for a dead friend, marking a time and place. At the Thanksgiving table she tries to remember how to say grace. In each of these poems she works to find it. I have grown fond of this pilgrim. I want to be her when she does.

–Anita Skeen author of “The Unauthorized Audubon”

Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]