WHOSE NAMES HAVE SLIPPED AWAY by Kathy Nelson

In Kathy Nelson’s exquisitely expressive poems, nature becomes teacher.  Nelson writes in the title poem:  “I’ve come out to find my bearings” as if nature provides an anchor.  She also thinks of those who have gone before her:   “. . . it is their road I walk, /looking for landmarks, signposts.” These brilliant distillations of moments in nature—a rain storm, an ice storm, a hurricane, a “snake coiled like a plate,” “a spider standing her ground,” “a robin drop[ping] down, / “sudden raptor to a rattling June bug,” the owl, “scouring/for warm blood on the ground”—mirror, and become metaphor for, the eternal struggles between daughters and mothers (and the specter of mother looms large), fathers, lovers, and that longing for rescue from “an infinite cascade into darkness.”

–Nancy Dillingham

Kathy Nelson’s work ministers to the deep places within us; she explores difficult interpersonal arenas with conviction and courage. Her poems are well-crafted, incisive, her narratives compelling.  There is one poem in particular, Friends, about a snake, whose imagery is so richly powerful it made me green with envy.  Anyone who has a chance to read this book is lucky, indeed.

–Tina Barr, Author of Kaleidoscope