Wild Verge: Poems - Softcover

"The title poem is an announcement--Wild Verge is the truth of the book--this poet honors wildness, sees boldly, risks, and considers the universe and all that's in it her subject. In 'Primitive Tools' she writes: 'I am tracking what is missing...' and we believe her. In this collection we come into relationship with how this poet sees personal heritage and history, we are given intensely focused visions of childhood, we watch her wrestle with bold, loving choices in her adult years, read her compelling poems that cut to the heart of political and moral matters in ways unexpected and moving, and we are convinced by the words in her poem, "Old Man Bear Song": 'I say these things that you might see them, /I love these things that you might love them.' I'm so glad there's this new collection by Lynette Reini-Grandell. She does the poet's job: sees the world in her own intense, vivid ways, makes her language fresh and surprising, and we do not want to stop reading. Take your own wild verge and get this book."--Deborah Keenan, author of ten collections of poetry and a book of writing ideas, from tiger to prayer

"This graceful collection of meditations on love, grain and stone, fur and breath, emptiness and cures, and the earthy underground offers many entries. Something holy happens in these passages. There's a vintage light here; float, swim, feel the gravity, and let yourself be pulled into its beautiful paths."--Sun Yung Shin, author of Unbearable Splendor

"This is a book of sheer resurrection where the poems demand a union between their creator and her new presence in the world. The voice here announces that poetry is a physical activity that will break all barriers toward a complete transformation of the self. Nothing is held back in these powerful poems that emerge from the life giving forces of the imagination."--Ray Gonzalez, author of Beautiful Wall

"This woman's poems sing with wonder and delight. I do not know what to call her. Shaman? Singer? Survivor? Lover? Priest? Lover of language and rhythm and art and music and horses and a transgender partner for sure. A benediction for sure."--Jim Lenfestey, author of A Marriage Book: 50 Year of Poems from a Marriage

"Reini-Grandell (Approaching the Gate, 2014) searches for moments of transformation in this poetry collection. 'For Your Information, ' a late poem in this book, begins, 'Today I found / your discarded banana peel / in the basement / on top of the dryer / removable lint trap / and realized // I must incite disorder.' Such instantaneous shifts from calm to chaos are common in this collection, which bears witness to life's terrible, beautiful ability to collapse, explode, and refashion itself. There are persona poems that have the feel of folklore, such as 'Figurative Beehives, Lower Silesia, ' narrated by a one-legged beehive maker who mourns his father, who was lost to a distant war. These sit alongside more contemporary poems, such as 'The Greening, ' in which the speaker, breaking up a concrete slab in her backyard, meets her new neighbor, or 'A Supermarket In Minnesota, ' in which the speaker's transgender partner is confronted by a religious woman in a grocery store. Topical poems, including one about Sandra Bland, an African-African woman who was found hanged in a Texas jail cell in 2015, and shorter lyrics about the wonders of nature and love round out this collection. There are combustive revelations in some works, as when a speaker's muse skips town: 'Now I've lost the fairy tale thread but think / this is a fable where someone is boiled / or burned or buried alive / before the transfiguring roar.' Reini-Grandell's poems take many guises, from free verse to augmented sonnets and pantoums. Not every piece quite lands, but the variety will keep readers excited for what might come next. Mystical, incantatory pieces like 'Geomancer' and 'I Am A Bear' set a delightfully witchy tone, while more grounded narrative works evoke the greatest emotional responses. 'Every Astonishing Day Of My Life' is a brilliant slideshow in 11 stanzas, which ends with this reflective ars poetica: 'I still sit at the table. I still leave / out significant parts of my story, my sins. / I still marry my strange familiar / every astonishing day of my life.' A singeing collection of surprises and epiphanies."--KIRKUS REVIEWS, May 14th, 2018