Flat Water: Nebraska Poems by Judy Brackett Crowe
$14.99
Judy Crowe has captured in this volume a full and detailed vision of her Nebraska childhood—the one-room schoolhouse where teacher and children told stories, played games, and finally slept in piles of blankets and coats, waiting for the men to come through the snow and save them; where a little girl rode out in the mornings in the sidecar of her young uncle’s silver Indian motorcycle to keep him company on his paper route; where the cousins jumped from the barn roof into the house-high hay to see if they could fly. It’s a world long gone and never to return, and we can be grateful that on these enchanted pages, it’s been so beautifully preserved.
–Gail Rudd Entrekin, poet—Rearrangement of the Invisible
Judy Crowe‘s language is vivid and precise, leading us to each small moment in this fine collection: folding newspapers in the sidecar of an Indian motorcycle for her teenage uncle to throw on the porches in Nebraska’s dawn, his aim perfected by baseball practice; a moment of truth between chopping block, axe, and chicken. Sandhill cranes cover winter fields, the Platte River braids its way from Colorado to Missouri, prairie grasses ripple under prairie skies. In Flat Water, Judy Crowe gives us back the memories of a midwestern childhood that many know only from fiction and dreams: homely delight, black-and-white mornings, fireflies, hollyhocks, corn stubble, silence.
–Molly Fisk, poet—The More Difficult Beauty
Judy Crowe’s gorgeous poems detailing her Nebraska childhood, transport the reader to a simpler time when a little girl’s happiness is an evening on the porch swing with her grandmother, “….snapping peas, eating a few, humming along with the peas pinging in the blue speckled tin bowl…” This collection of poems is a delight for the senses; each luscious image honors her Nebraska home. Evocative, heartfelt, and deeply moving, Judy Crowe’s work invites us in. “Welcome,” it says. “Sit down and stay awhile.” This collection not only reveals but revels in a way of life now sadly gone.
–Judie Rae, poet—The Weight of Roses
Description
Flat Water: Nebraska Poems
by Judy Brackett Crowe
$14.99, paper
978-1-63534-850-7
2019
Judy Brackett Crowe’s stories and poems have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies. She has taught creative writing and English literature and composition at Sierra College. She is a member of the community of Writers at Squaw Valley. Born in Nebraska, she’s lived in a small town in the northern Sierra Nevada foothills for many years. She is married to photographer Gene Crowe, and they have 3 children and 4 grandchildren. She believes that the right words in the right places are worth a thousand pictures, and, as other writers have said, she writes to discover what she thinks.
Bean Logic –
Transporting. A vivid visit to another time and space. Crowe is precise in her language, the poems are spare and the images stay with you. I’m still thinking about the big black buttons on a small girls winter coat. I will revisit these poems again and again.