On This Borrowed Bike: Poems - Softcover

"Panepinto plummets through landscapes, riding the borrowed bicycle of the title poem and flying 'steadily without looking / lifting like a crow, ' political and spiritual by turn, and at her best when looking hard at the people she encounters. . . . The book feeds from a surrealist version of the blues, draws evocative pictures of sleeping in cars, of Panepinto's native Spokane ('in night streets a car rode behind us slow / a girl rolled down the window / yelled meth meth meth') and of drunken women in need of a helping hand home, but always comes back to nature. . . The connections she makes, the images she pinpoints from far above like a crow seeking nourishment flower into unexpected intricacies that filter through the book." --Adam Horovitz, Bare Fiction Magazine, April 2014 "Lisa Panepinto's abstract and lyrical vignettes serve as a wonderful introduction to a fresh new voice, bound to rattle the canon." --Patricia Smith, poet, spoken word performer, playwright, National Book Award for Poetry finalist, Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah "These minimalist and imagistic poems in Lisa Panepinto's new collection of poetry are woven with the gossamer of crow dreams and water from endangered rivers. In these pages Justice falls in love with the blues. There's scuffling and dancing, and it's all coming down to what happens in the dark. There is enough love for everyone. Lisa Panepinto sings. You'll want to be here." --Joy Harjo, Native American poet, musician and performer, i>She Had Some Horses "Lisa says "waves turn to songs," and these songs rise from the depths, explode into blue skies, call down ghosts and fog, sing down lonely streets, find homes in hearts and we want to sing with her - gladly. The gifts these poems bring fill our baskets, fill our hearts, wash over us, rich waves of song." --Gary Lawless, poet, publisher, teacher, Poems for Wild Earth "Some, like Sexton, tear us apart with the horror and the beauty of life; some, like Lorca, give us the infinite song of symbolism, and some, like Panepinto, connect us to the great web of existence, remind us that the hidden thoughts that pulse with the breath of the world belong to us as well. Hers is a world where wind turns a down jacket into wings, where all gods are black and "black is universe / black is trust," where the lens over the left eye is love, the lens over the right is suffering, and the resulting view is that everything we share breath with has its own dignity, however dark and dusky." - Quenton Baker, poet "Lisa Panepinto brings her world to us slowly, as it has come to her, mostly a voice from the northern Rockies, a voice of rivers and mountains, mining and logging, farm and ranch towns, a mix of tribes and ethnicities hard to find elsewhere. She is a young woman already wise in the ways of the poor and disenfranchised, wise as well in the natural and spirit worlds too few are able to understand as one." --James Koller, poet, novelist, editor, publisher, Snows Gone By "Simply complex and universally individual, Lisa Panepinto's poems encompass politics and the soul, nature and the body, paradox and the mind. Panepinto's voice is so assured and pure, so confident and directed, that to follow it on its intricate and profound journeys can bring serious joy. Far more ambitious than they might at first appear, influenced by Native American, beat, and experimental poetics alike, these are poems that do not shrink from the poet's oldest task, the mighty healing work of the shaman." --Annie Finch, Among the Goddesses: An Epic Libretto in Seven Dreams "Lisa Panepinto's abstract and lyrical vignettes serve as a wonderful introduction to a fresh new voice, bound to rattle the canon." --Patricia Smith, poet, spoken word performer, playwright, National Book Award for Poetry finalist, "Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah" "These minimalist and imagistic poems in Lisa Panepinto's new collection of poetry are woven with the gossamer of crow dreams and water from endangered rivers. In these pages Justice falls in love with the blues. There's scuffling and dancing, and it's all coming down to what happens in the dark. There is enough love for everyone. Lisa Panepinto sings. You'll want to be here." --Joy Harjo, Native American poet, musician and performer, i>She Had Some Horses" "Lisa says "waves turn to songs," and these songs rise from the depths, explode into blue skies, call down ghosts and fog, sing down lonely streets, find homes in hearts and we want to sing with her - gladly. The gifts these poems bring fill our baskets, fill our hearts, wash over us, rich waves of song." --Gary Lawless, poet, publisher, teacher, "Poems for Wild Earth" "Some, like Sexton, tear us apart with the horror and the beauty of life; some, like Lorca, give us the infinite song of symbolism, and some, like Panepinto, connect us to the great web of existence, remind us that the hidden thoughts that pulse with the breath of the world belong to us as well. Hers is a world where wind turns a down jacket into wings, where all gods are black and "black is universe / black is trust," where the lens over the left eye is love, the lens over the right is suffering, and the resulting view is that everything we share breath with has its own dignity, however dark and dusky." - Quenton Baker, poet "Lisa Panepinto brings her world to us slowly, as it has come to her, mostly a voice from the northern Rockies, a voice of rivers and mountains, mining and logging, farm and ranch towns, a mix of tribes and ethnicities hard to find elsewhere.

A stunning first collection full of lyrical, heartwarming poems by the remarkable Lisa Panepinto. Her words touch on the suffering of the disenfranchised was well as the beauty and power of nature. As poet and National Book Award Finalist Patricia Smith declares, "Lisa Panepinto's abstract and lyrical vignettes serve as a wonderful introduction to a fresh new voice, bound to rattle the canon." Native American poet and musician Joy Harjo raves, "In these pages Justice falls in love with the blues. There's scuffling and dancing, and it's all coming down to what happens in the dark. There is enough love for everyone. Lisa Panepinto sings. You'll want to be here." Poet and Robert Fitzgerald Prosody Award winner Annie Finch exclaims, "Panepinto's voice is so assured and pure, so confident and directed, that to follow it on its intricate and profound journeys can bring serious joy. Far more ambitious than they might at first appear, influenced by Native American, beat, and experimental poetics alike, these are poems that do not shrink from the poet's oldest task, the mighty healing work of the shaman."