The tender, attentive poems of Carol Mikoda show us how to look up and outside of ourselves to notice the intricate aliveness at play in clouds, leaves, and water—to feel the whole world. Her poems are sinuous and elemental, each one a lesson in how to find wonder in every small thing around us “that murmurs/trembles with life.”
–James Crews, poet and author of Kindness Will Save the World
Clouds, storms, bees, breezes blow through Carol Mikoda‘s book of poems. As the title suggests, this is a book filled with the things of nature, and a sense of wonder in the face of its beauties and changes. Any nature lover, any poetry lover, will find solace and loveliness in this book.
–Liz Rosenberg, author and poet, CHILDREN OF PARADISE.
Poetry of the environment here now tests the environment of poetry. This collection offers an adventure in sight, sound, touch, and feeling. It unfolds as a performance of reflection, sensation, grace and hope, change and surprise.
–Mary Lynch Kennedy, Distinguished Teaching Professor Emerita, Department of English, SUNY Cortland
Gorgeous rhythms and language await the reader in this pastoral collection from a highly skilled poet weaving catachresis and word play into the mix. Although the temperature of Mikoda’s collection is warm, melancholy remains just below the wind and water. Knowing we all are in need of that hope, that consideration found in our natural world, the poet writes to make that offer: “I will bind those statements together, / extract what secret gems I can find, / and plant each one, like an iris bulb/in its own velvety woodland den” in “Potential.” Mikoda has done just that with these beautiful poems of wind and water, leaf and lake.
–Nancy Avery Dafoe, author of thirteen books, including The House Was Quiet, But the Mind Was Anxious and Innermost Sea.
Carol Mikoda writes poems about nature, and how it speaks of change, especially the changes that come as we age. Some of her work simply presents the wonder and comfort of wind, water, and leaf, other poems speak of “the thin skin between here and There.” Full disclosure: too often I find that well-known and well-thought-of poetry is much too deliberately complex for me to enjoy. Mikoda’s work is deceptively simple. The second time through each poem, you will discover more and more.
–Judith Pratt, playwright and author of the novels, Silijeea Magic and The Dry Country
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