Possum, Beaver, Lion: Variants by Sarah Voss

With unflinching courage and skill, Sarah Voss‘s poems explore aging and the human need for purpose while defining the possum, beaver, and lion in all of us.  The details and images are personal which make them universal. In one poem, the granddaughter’s emotions are described “… on a teeter-totter.”  In the next, the grandmother’s “… emotions ride inside on/ escalators. Sometimes/ I still take the stairs.”  Later, Voss writes, “… until we tickle the sky/ with new-found hope…”  Moving through this collection, the reader “thanks this holy day” along with the poet, despite the setbacks.  Wonderfully crafted and wise, these are poems to carry and to share.

–Cat Dixon, author of Eva and Too Heavy to Carry (Stephen F. Austin University Press 2016, 2014) and Our End Has Brought the Spring (Finishing Line Press, 2015). She is the managing editor of The Backwaters Press, a nonprofit press in Omaha.

This collection especially illustrates the talents of Sarah Voss.  Using her ingenuity and fresh, concise language, she creates a work of rewarding complexity for the reader.  In her insightful and articulate analysis of the human psyche, she plays a large range of human emotions entwined with a keen sense of humor.

–Cheryl Arends 

Cheryl Arends’ work has appeared in The Licking River Review, The South Dakota Review, The Midwest Quarterly and elsewhere.  She recently published a chapbook, An Early Frost on Marigold Blossoms.

 In Possum, Beaver, Lion gimlet-eyed poet Sarah Voss takes us deeply into her world, and shields us from no pain or emotions. From anger and frustration in How You Know I’m Mad: A Response to your “Poem in 7 Parts” to gentle, playful tenderness in numerous poems about her grandkids, then to a loving look at spousal foibles in Things My Husband Doesn’t Know I Do, Voss’ deft voice guides us through her world like a seer. Clearly, Sarah Voss not only reached “a hard seventy” but some hard-earned wisdom as well. You will come away from these poems smarter about being human, and about the good that poems can do.

–Greg Kosmicki