Ana by Kate Cumiskey

“Kate Cumiskey has done something remarkable and original. I was enjoying the quiet life of Ana, the vivid detail of her routine of widowhood and coping, cleanly and effectively told, and when I got to the end was forced to re-imagine all that I had read. I can’t recall another novel that has done this, except in a cheesy way. It’s not really a twist–it’s in plain sight all along, except that we are preconditioned to make certain assumptions about her that are totally wrong, and Cumiskey gently exploits those preconceptions. She brings warmth and humanity to Ana and creates a household drama that is really a very powerful argument for the humanity of any person like Ana. Brava! A real tour-de-force.”

–Philip Gerard, author of the novel Cape Fear Rising and recipient of the North Carolina Award in Literature, the state’s highest civilian honor.

Rooted in place, the poems in Kate’s Cumiskey’s collection The Women Who Gave Up Their Vowels span generations of a family raised in a Florida beach town, where “South of the jetties, cars crowd up to the high-tide poles. Coolers, surfboards, /guitars, woofers, towels, diapers…” comprise the landscape. A great love of this place, and the people who inhabit Cumiskey’s past and present sweeps through the pages of this collection giving voice to the daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, neighbor and teacher poet. Thank you, Kate Cumiskey, for this “giving us something to cling to when the hard times came.” We’ve never needed these poems more than now.

–Marjory Wentworth