Böcker utgivna av Kelsay Books

These poems are brave and courageous. They capture and immortalize that which others would rather be forgotten. Unsaid. Unspoken. They rekindle a flame long ago burnt down softly. Memories. Home. Community. People who inhabited the spaces in between. But here is a poet who knows how to skin a poem. "A tug/ and the pelt tears loose./ Almost no blood."-Levi Romero, Inaugural New Mexico State Poet LaureateIn the musically rich language of a natural story-teller, Cedar Koons delivers a well-wrought romp through family lore: a view into the tale-teller's internal world, her growing spiritual awareness from childhood coupled with an enthusiasm for the embodied life. We learn of her developing race and class consciousness in her teenage years; her sexual explorations under the eyes of Catholic school nuns; a pre-Roe abortion described with wit and blunt candor; and the speaker's sister's suicide, mourned in a sestina that hits its mark. Bourbon and Branch Water is a poetic memoir with wheels, a savory and moving ride through an alert life.-Sawnie Morris, Author of Her, Infinite (2016 New Issues Press)Cedar Koons' voice carries us ever forward with its authority and clear-eyed look of what is. The language is sensual, bearing witness to the griefs and celebrations of self, family, community, and the larger world. Whether in form or free verse, these poems document a life richly lived in the moment, its bounty derived from hard-earned truths and touches of serendipity. -Debra Kaufman, Author of God Shattered (2019 Jacar Press) In Bourbon and Branch Water, Cedar Koons takes us on a poetic journey like no other. We witness a life fully lived, versified, and captured in a voice that rings true and revelatory. Fierce spirit is in evidence page after page. These poems fearlessly plumb the depths of what it means to be human, to be shaped and changed by what we go through. With wisdom, humor, and grace, Cedar Koons invites us to join her on this exploration. Come on along and see the world anew.-Toni Mirosevich, Author of Spell Heaven (2022 Counterpoint Press 2022)

In Anastasia Vassos' beautiful chapbook, Nostos, we braid home through Greek myth and memory, through family and our lives today-I'm concerned there's less time than ever, /convinced there's more poetry everywhere. In Vassos' poems, "ordinary days" mix with the mystical, moments where God is in the grocery store stacking pomegranates and a speaker saying prayers/to the so-called dead. In Nostos, story is everywhere. Who am I to complain of loneliness? she asks as we find ourselves alive after a pandemic, in "Achilles in the Twentieth Century." These engaging poems captivate and return to family-On her last visit to Greece/my mother and her two sisters/left a note in the elbow of an almond tree. Vassos' poems profoundly speak to yesterday, today, and tomorrow reminding us of home and returning-My father used to say/the best part/of the journey/was coming home. These poems are a homecoming-let these poems bring you back.-Kelli Russell Agodon, author of Dialogues with Rising Tides (Copper Canyon Press) These poems sing as the ancients did: of hungers and heroes and homecomings, of trials and triumph and loss. With tales from Ancient Greece as her guide, Vassos navigates a modern life, celebrating the abundance of her lineages even while recounting woes. As we negotiate "the unmuscled arm of Ohio," Boston, and, of course, the Aegean, we revel in the "Ordinary Days" and exceptional histories she renders with stylistic grace and lasting imagery. These poems entertain nostalgia and yet are urgent and present, driven by the knowledge that "there's less time than ever," and certain of poetry's necessity in the face of it. Here Vassos stands upon the shoulders of beloved poets, modern and ancient alike, and weaves her own beautiful tales that we are better for having read.-Amanda Moore, author of Requeening The poems of Anastasia Vassos' Nostos are deeply scored with a clear-eyed tenderness and a sharp poetics. This book is rich with poems finely wrought and wise about family, loss, and the visions we have of home and ancient lands. Vassos' poems shine with gorgeousness and grit, each one rising "above the temporary earth / tail swagging / in the wind colors / translucent against sun's lariat." This is a very fine book.-Christopher Salerno, author of The Man Grave

"Unrecorded," the first poem in Carolyn Raphael's rich new collection, begins: "We breathe in smoke when Pepys describes the fire / of London, wince when Plath bites Hughes's cheek / at their intense encounter." Thanks to her curiosity, sensitivity, and technical mastery, we gasp at the cruelty of Roman and Renaissance nobility, groan at the aches of aging, and mourn the loss of departed friends and family members. Wry observations mingle smoothly with tender family moments, as poems in free verse mingle with those in traditional forms-a number of excellent sonnets, a touching rondeau, and a pair of superb villanelles. The fullness of the living expertly chronicled on every page of Travelers on My Route constantly disproves the conclusion of "Unrecorded," that "there is no room / to chronicle a life consumed with living." -Michael PalmaWhile the renowned arts with powerful literary journals, rapturous music, majestic frescoes can be our "compass" to human "triumph" or "heartache," Carolyn Raphael astutely admits "a life consumed with living" cannot be fully "chronicle[d]." And yet, with enamored and exquisite eloquence, she gives us a resonant glow from her life experiences and that of other real and imaginary figures, whom she gracefully and sensitively enters, and then looks out. Raphael evinces that by observing the world, we participate in making it. Traveling from joyous new birth, to meditations on a "cricket serenade," to a noblewoman's complaints from inside a Renaissance water game, skillfully shaped by traditional and original craftsmanship, Raphael's poetic glow is rich with her keen attention and responsiveness to natural and human splendors and struggles, all marked by "time's fingerprints."-Gayl Teller"There still is time for laughter," declares Cosimo I de' Medici at the end of the poem "Water Games," even though he has just enumerated unbearable losses that have befallen him. This pronouncement might as well be the motto of Travelers on My Route, a book that celebrates life despite trauma and tragedy, ravages of aging and illness. Resignation is never the answer. Instead, Carolyn Raphael always finds reasons for joie de vivre, while acknowledging the cycle of blossoming and decay: "Some needles yellow, then turn to brown / and fall each fall. I think it's dying, / but it's only pruning the weak and old, / making way for the newly green" ("A Calendar of Trees"). This is a wise and invigorating collection and a thrilling testament to the human spirit.-Anton Yakovlev

Attuned to "temporary states of grace," in beauties of the prairie and wide horizon so often dismissed as "flyover country," and to a sense of community perhaps engendered by the landscape, "If I stood naked under my clothes, / I wasn't alone," these hauntingly lovely poems offer solace, as their characters accept inevitable losses, graced by their appreciation and a generosity which invites readers to sit, where "Each now is a new now, / teeming as every bladed leaf, / flower and seed."-April Ossmann, author of Event BoundariesIn Midwest Hymns, Dale Cottingham more than meets his "self-imposed task to examine that ground, / view sun flecks on rock, imagine / dust raising an aura in mid-afternoon." His precise attention to the scent, sound, and mood of winds, for instance, both literal and emotional, evoke a nuanced Midwest vividly in this moving paean. With quiet, compelling accuracy, he conflates the land, the people, and himself. He knows "the rich aroma / of native soil with its / hint of tartness" and renders it deftly, in "a clear, level light." Like Edward Hopper, Cottingham renders a cast of individuals, in their profound isolation, with understated love. There is quiet confidence here that rewards the reader and a restrained language of longing that honors the complexities of living.-Rebecca Kaiser Gibson, author of Girl as Birch

Blesses us with alchemical wonder, irony and light, as he travels from the roots of mystery Where People Are Trees, imagining a protective canopy for refugees under the stars, as old friends embrace the world within, momentarily blinded by a miracle. Steve Minkin's spell-binding poems inspire our becoming with an aura that sanctifies our life, extolling friendship in these hard times, laughing Where People Are Trees with poetry's vulnerable pain and joy. As Steve Minkin says: "At a certain point poetry asks you/why you are here/ how much are you prepared to give up/ how much are you willing to lose."-Terry Hauptman, author of Fallen Angels and Rubies in the Mud When Steve Minkin tells us "the poem came to me / in a poem-fertile forest/ but I had neither paper nor pen," we are struck by wisdom and the power of language; when he tells us of a homeless person, whose shopping cart is "perfectly packed" by "someone who clearly cares/ about the efficient use of space, / (perhaps an ex-marine)," we glimpse the empathy, imagination, keen observation, and quiet thrum of resistance and protest that fuel the heart of Minkin's poems.-Sawnie Morris, author of Her, Infinite, winner of the New Issues Poetry PrizeSteve Minkin is a Truth Traveler--not just geographically but also spiritually. In Where People Are Trees transformation takes root in the truths he finds and speaks. Epiphanies are found and lost ("for a moment / I could see how far I could not see") as they often are in the truth seeker's shape shifting world. In these poems Minkin searches from Sikkim, Chiapas, Singaraja in Bali, Iowa in November, The Bronx, Long Island, the Turkish Bosporus, Cuba, Colorado, Bangladesh to his home in southern Vermont. His journey brings to mind Eliot's famous lines: "We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.-Tim Mayo, author of Thesaurus of Separation (finalist for the 2017 Montaigne Medal and the 2017 Eric Hoffer Award)