Abby N. Lewis is a young poet with an old soul, already aware of the losses of time, the pressures put upon us by growing older, and by the uncertainties of the future. She writes with rich imagery and real feeling for her subjects. The strongest poems here recognize the quiet joys of sisterhood, and the special freedoms that belong to childhood. Lewis, however, is not afraid to shine a light into the darker corners of a young woman’s experience, where even the bond between two sisters cannot protect from leering eyes and fearful dreams. This Fluid Journey begins a quest, a poet’s true course, and readers will surely discover many treasures along the way.

–Jesse Graves, Author of Basin Ghosts & Tennessee Landscape with Blighted Pine

The child in This Fluid Journey is as familiar as memory. She lives and plays, wanders and wonders, and readers remember days and nights and former lives lost but not wasted. But this young poet understands when to cling to and when to put away childish things, and when the latter is called for, she invests more mature settings and experiences with the same charm and mystery that nature holds for the child. The poetry of Abby N. Lewis—its familiar and unexpected perspectives, its often fluid music, its soaring promise—seems imaginatively allegorized in the second stanza of “The Bridge”: “Moss gazes at the underbelly of the bridge / as a shadow covers the light which seeps / between closed blinds. The water’s whisper / grows to a timid babble as birds / adjust their wings in preparation for flight.”

–Michael Amos Cody, Author of Gabriel’s Songbook