Slow Blooming Gratitudes (NWVS # 130) by Sarah W. Bartlett

These are no ordinary poems of love, loss, letting go, courage, and universality. Rather, the selections in Slow Blooming Gratitudes are extraordinary poems about all of the above. Bartlett weaves through the collection the thread of one-ness (“all loss is one”), reminding me of one of Merton’s most famous lines, “we are already one.” This chapbook is that rare combination of heart-mind-soul-intellect—masterfully crafted verse that reaches outward from the page, extending the hand of welcome to each reader.

–Cynthia Brackett-Vincent, publisher and editor, the Aurorean poetry journal

Sarah Bartlett’s Slow Blooming Gratitudes is near religion in its capacity to offer solace and acceptance in times of adversity.  When our bodies betray us with disease, death, fears and uncertainties that happen as surely as the natural world has its own life cycles, Bartlett looks to the healing powers of this natural world and to laughter, family, pets and love as antidotes.  And she does so in language that seeps into the reader like a slow, soft massage.  Her words, “Time passes, each moment a present,” are as relevant to the pages of this book as they are to life.  Buy it, read it and keep it close by.

–Ellaraine Lockie, award-winning poet, nonfiction author, contest judge, educator