Poetry Preview

 

 

A first volume of published poetry is no small thing. Yes, it is crazy exciting, especially to see it up on Amazon in pre-order status. But it is also a remarkable accomplishment of dedicated work done well. My friend Kasey Jueds (winner of the 2012 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize) is in the final stages of releasing her first poetry collection, Keeper, out into the world. You can have a look at Amazon. The reviews there will easily convince you that you need to order the book immediately, but just to whet your appetite, here is one poem from the volume:

 

Deep North

For three years, my friend kept the dead songbird

in her freezer, until the power quit:  cold cave,

like the one at Lascaux, closed

to visitors now.  In its perfect dark

the painted animals gleam, lucent as organs

harbored under skin, carried everywhere

but never seen.  In the middle

of her night, my friend is

painting:  chickadee, whose name repeats its song.

I’d like to lie down a while

in the body that’s mine, that part of Basho’s title

rendered as interior, or deep north.

Kasey Jueds

 

 

Brava, my friend. Well done!

Many thanks to Kasey for choosing one of my drawings, Cave Light, to grace the cover of this volume. I am so honored and humbled to have a small part in this project. I had hoped to begin this post with an image of the book cover but do not have one available to me. Instead, I have included the original drawing. For a view of the book, please visit the Amazon link.