Nonlinear Healing by Diane Klammer

In Diane Klammer’s poems, the twenty-first century American body attempts to contain the beauty of everyday life across a veil of physical pain that aches in tandem with our environment. It is in the very human need to address the spiritual contradictions of being alive, even as “every cell has been stung”, that Klammer’s poetry spills over into crow language, poems that stellate across the page, or weave contrapuntally. In the wise acknowledgment of a cosmic question that can never be answered, but must be carried as a personal quest, Nonlinear Healing weaves a rich tapestry of art, language, and holy confession.

–Majda Gama, author of the Call of Paradise and In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls

This is a breathtakingly magnificent chapbook of superbly crafted poetry and vibrantly original artwork. Diane Klammer takes us on a journey of healing where stars are “a negation of shadow showering a moonless trail,” and yet “messages to the milky way.” There is such vastness here, such hard-earned peace in a world of wracking pain and breathtaking beauty. She finds a balance and peace beyond linear thought and understanding. “Maybe it’s birdsong,” she says, “as to own a bird, one must live in a house of glass walls.” These are words and visions that illuminate our time.

–Jared Smith, author of A Sphere Encased in Fires and Life