Eating the Light, by Mary Barbara Moore

Eating the Light front cover

In Eating the Light, these new poems of Mary Moore ‘s new poems offer a feast for the reader.  On subjects both natural and human-wrought, her eye is the painter’s: vividly clear.  She creates an appetite for looking and a fulfillment of seeing.   Moore’s perceptions are sensuous, intelligent, and the world in the poems is a world transformed both physically and emotionally.  Her metaphors illuminate and satisfy, and having dined with her, we begin to glow, sated on such delectables. These poems embody a kind of mystical sensitivity to the sources of life:  immediate, continuously perishing, making its considerable mark in these gorgeous lines.

Holy Ghosts of Whiskey, by Marty Silverthorne

Holy Ghosts of Whiskey front cover

Holy Ghost of Whiskey is a beautiful commitment to the god-force of memory. Marty Silverthorne reminds us over and over again how poetry strengthens our root. These deep evocations of language and ghosts create pathways that charm us into honky tonk heavens. From beginning to end these poems offer a haunted awareness of the joys, sacrifices, and sorrows that are singing in the hinges of three room shot gun shacks. These poems lift up the roots and reveal well-crafted tenderness and emphatic imagination that bears witness to the longings and challenges we all have confronting our angels, our ghosts, loves, and losses.

The Way the Rain Works, by Ralph Earle

The Way the Rain Works front cover

This is a deeply felt book about a family in crisis that lives inside you and lends itself to multiple readings. Sad, but not without its small, yet sustaining, redemptions: “In the evening, overflowing with secret love,/ I dangle my feet above the receding/ spillway and listen: ripples. The moon’s/ reflection rides them like a blessing.