Description
- Kind: Perfect Bound
- Pages: 100
- Language: English
- ISBN: 978-1-933675-59-6
Praise
Hansel takes the stuff of her life- that first person world- and spins a web which takes in all of us who have lived awhile. We travel through her poems blessed ‘with light for (our) journey’, feeling not like voyeurs but companions for whom, Hansel claims, ‘I must still give thanks.’ Enlarged by our journey, we offer our thanks back to her.” —Dana Wildsmith author of One Good Hand
“This work is Pauletta Hansel’s poetic record of a journey, one of discovery and reflection about her origins, family, work, children, love. Her road is sometimes jagged, rarely certain, and because of this, is courageous and honest in its quest for meaning, purpose and peace.” —Joseph Enzweiler author of A Winter on Earth
“These are poems of a wonderful grace, simplicity, and discipline. Each is cut fine as a jewel. Each takes a perfectly executed leap from the mundane. There is grief here, but something else as well. In a world of poetic lament, it is a joy to find poems that lift us into the poet’s joy.” —Michael Henson author of The Tao of Longing & The Body Geographic and Crow Call
Excerpt
Why I Write
Always the hope
it is more artichoke than onion,
and I am heading toward
a plump, sweet mystery
the surface can never reveal.
Or like tapping mother’s crystal goblets,
listening for each resonating tone–
yes this; not that; these together
make a tune. Each note’s story
known only in relation to the other.
Author
Pauletta Hansel’s poetry has been featured recently in journals including Wind, ABZ Journal, Southern Women’s Review, Still: The Journal, The Mom Egg, Penwood Review and Appalachian Journal, and anthologized in Motif: Come What May and Boomtown: the Queens MFA Tenth Anniversary Celebratory Anthology. Collections include Divining, (WovenWord Press, 2001) First Person (Dos Madres Press, 2007) and The Lives We Live in Houses (Forthcoming, Wind Publications, Fall 2011). She is a current editor of Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, the literary publication of Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative. Pauletta received her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. She lives in Cincinnati with her husband, Owen Cramer.
We would like to thank the “Alice Pezorski Fund” of Clearfield, Pennsylvania for its generous support which has made this book possible.
