sample.spring by Margaret LeMay

Here are poems that, in John Cage’s fine phrase, “resist the march of understanding.” You’ll find them as fresh tomorrow as they are today. Searching and independent, LeMay investigates herself and finds, beyond heart break, the songs it breaks into.

–David Hamilton, author of Ossabaw: Poems and Editor Emeritus of The Iowa Review 

In these spare, acutely observant poems, Margaret LeMay describes the stress of living in a world so endangered it is hard to explain to a child. Her internal dialogue, with its syntax of sadness, is perfectly placed. The way the natural world enters this dialogue is imagistically exact and exacting. The poet’s perception expresses an existential truth that both clarifies and transcends narrative. Here beauty enters the dark consciousness as opposition, but its very existence offers a glimmer of salvation. The voice-driven precision of this collection is in pursuit of a complex truth. This is an astonishing debut.

–Jan Weissmiller, author of In Divided Light, editor of A Poetry Criticism Reader, owner of Prairie Lights Books