Walking to Windward

	20 of New England's Best Contemporary Poets
	Available as complete set or as individual volumes

Individual boxed slipcover volumes / Price: $35 each

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Complete 4-volume set including all 21 chapbooks in slipcover boxes / Price: $99 (reg. $135)

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Click on volume for book covers, book descriptions, and information about the authors:

The Walking to Windward collection was designed and typeset by Hobblebush Books.

I Hear America Singing: Sometimes it troubles me begins this collection of
chapbooks admirably. Robert Dunn, the poet Laureate of Portsmouth, NH, has
a wonderful sense-of-humor, at times tongue in cheek and subtle, at other
times wider and more "in your face," but always there is gentleness and
compassion underlying that humor. These are short poems, often no more
than seven lines, sometimes two to a page, and they range from the
bittersweet longing of the well-wrought sonnet, "In Your Absence," to the
hilarious nine-word parody of "Country & Western."

The lovely narrative poems in Patricia Fargnoli's Lives of Others eschew
any hint of the confessional. Although usually written in the first
person, they describe other people's worlds and their inhabitants, or,
like the three-page long, powerful "Vathana Tells of Her Hunger" are
dramatic monologues spoken in some other voice than the poet's individual
consciousness. As in all of Ms. Fargnoli's poetry, wonder and energy shine
through these poems' precise language and haunting imagery.

Lucky to be Born in a House of Milk & Poems from The White Nightgown comes
from the pen of Catherine O'Brian. The first half of the book consists of
evocative narratives of her early life among servants in the Philippines.
"The Amah" is powerful with its repetitions and rhythms that establish and
echo at the poem's beginning and end. The second half of the book are poem
fragments about the title garment, sensuous and delicate,
often with ahaiku feel to them.

The Great Apology, by Mark DeCarteret, brims with poems that pulse with
quiet intensity, often with anguish, sometimes with irony. Nature imagery
is plentiful and used well, Poems range from haiku, through the formal
lines of "Bernadette the Saint," to longer, personal narrative, such as
the outstanding "My Aunt the Magnificent" and "Wish You Were" where we
find such images as cramming/chaos down the moon's woeful throat and
Somewhere, a dog howls/ at the spot the moon occupied,/ its muzzle a
black crust,/ its coat a net of locust.

The fifth chapbook that completes Volume l, I Hear America Singing, in the
Walking to Windward series, and the first chapbook that begins Volume ll,
A Book of Hours, are both by Julia Older. Completing the first volume,
City in the Sky is a collection of a dozen poems inspired by the Indians
of Mexico and the Southwest. The poet takes on a native-American persona
in some while others are written from the observer's view. "The Blue
Appaloosa" was my personal favorite here.

In her second chapbook, The Ossabaw Book of Hours, Julia Older's sixteen
poems suggest the primitive richness of Ossabaw Island, a former
plantation, later an artistic/scientific colony, now a state preserve,
which lies off the Georgia coast. These haunting poems arise from the
island's almost overwhelming fecundity. Beginning with the stunning
"Midnight," each poem, through its nature-based imagery, creates an inner
world which the poet gives to us in now delicate, now fierce poems.
"Cabalistic Metaphor" shouldn't be missed.

Elizabeth Knies' White Peonies is a chapbook of heartfelt poetry centered
on nature for its images and content. In these quiet poems, she ranges
from country to city, and around the world from Kyoto to Cambridge to St.
Petersburg. She recounts dreams and memories, and shines in her ekphrastic
verse based on such luminaries as Monet, Borges, Montale, Holderlin and
Cartier-Bresson (photographer). "The Mourning Dove" and "Middle of Life"
are two outstanding yet deceptively simple poems.

Jean Pedrick's The World of Grey & The Man in the Picture is two
chapbooks in one. The first consists of thirteen poems about objects that
bear the color grey: fog, ashes, mourning doves, tarmac, rainy nights,
and so on. The second gives us poems of (you guessed it) men, everyone
from Bog Man and Potemkin through carnival barkers. "At The Albertina"
and "Ave Atque Vale," a slightly longer poem, are particularly noteworthy.

Tempting Fate, by Katherine Solomon, is poetry of transformation. In this
series of poems we become Sappho, Galatea, a witch casting spells, a
sculptor, a widow. The poet travels through Mexico and envisions the lives
of those she meets, remembers playing cripple as a child when polio was
rampant, and, in a heartbreakingly true and beautifully-crafted poem
called "Bread," she looks at war-torn Sarajevo, drawing unique and
striking comparisons. She is a master in her use of imagery. "Hare" and
"Accidental Light" are other standouts in an excellent collection.

Mappemonde is the work of a versatile poet, J. Kates. The chapbook
contains found poems, a riddle, free-verse narratives, rhymed narrative
and sonnets. Some are pervaded by a sense of grim irony, a slightly
jaundiced wit. Others are incredibly tender, such as "What I Can Take,"
"The Woman in my Bed Talks about her Child," which, along with "Painting
in Blue," are poems that brilliantly illuminate this chapbook and make it
shine. Thus ends the second volume of Walking to Windward.

Volume III, Invocation, begins with the luminous chapbook, Invocation to
the Birds, by Kristen Lindquist. These poems of transcendent joy revel in
the daily miracles of everyday life, family and friends. They are rich
with nature imagery and their endings are just wonderful. Especially
notable are "Grandmother," with its unforgettable line We want to be good
animals, "Hawk in a Tree, Roadside," and "Fall," which ends
Not thelosses to come,/ but the geese unspooling/
their ancient calls/ acrossthe daylit moon.

Sidney Hall, Jr. is the author of the charming Chebeague, which brims over
with warm good-humor. Reading "The Black Dogs of Chebeague," "The Women
of Chebeague," and "The Men of Chebeague" might be an effective cure for
depression. Mr. Hall's island creates the world as most of us would like
it to be. And the poem with which he ends the chapbook, "A Clean Thought" is
a wry three-line gem so representative of his understated humor: So much
more effective/ to be naked/ when you bathe.

Elizabeth Tibbets demonstrates her skill in delineating worlds for us with
image and fine-tuned narrative in Perfect Selves. Many of these poems
center around people the poet may have cared for, the afflicted and ill
and very old, or their caretakers, the nurses themselves. We meet such a
caregiver in the richly layered poem, "A Nurse Reads A Book of Luminous
Things." And the fine lyric "When Lavender Comes" is a gentle delight.

W. E. Butts is present to us in White Bees, a somewhat longer chapbook.
The book begins strongly with the powerful meditation on memory,
"September" and follows it with such fine poems as "Today," "Arboretum,"
and "At The Harbor," to name just a few of the memorable poems he has
given us in his book. His subject is the past and how it impinges on the present, how it
haunts us and how it blesses us.

Another Stopping Place, by Candice Stover, is distinguished by its
attention to detail, to very specific detail in exterior and interior
landscape. Her multi-layered poems are poems of travel and memory and
dream. "Seven Postcards from Portugal" is a series of seven vignettes,
each its own poem, yet part of the Portuguese landscape they inhabit.
"Envoy of the Absolutes" is a strong sestina and the nine part poem "Off
the Map" is a fine ending to the chapbook.

The Rhetoric of Fiction is a series of twelve chapters in a marriage, a
bad abusive marriage, by former Maine poet laureate Kate Barnes. It is
notable for its rich imagery, clarity, and precision of language. And, oh
yes, the story: the woman escapes, still longing for the blessing of her
mate, for some sort of vindication in memory. The last poem, The Dining
Car, is outstanding. This chapbook completes Volume III.

L. R. Burger's chapbook, Sightings, begins the fourth and final volume of
the Walking to Windward series, the volume appropriately, also, named
Sightings. These fifteen poems feature birds, either as subject or
metaphor. There is one exception: the affirming "The Crossing," celebrating
human friendship and love, with these final four lines, You cannot speak for
me,/ but when you speak I believe/ it is you that is speaking./ This sees
me across. These are celebratory poems of the natural world that speak
from an almost spare beauty and grace.

News from the Grate comes from the pen of Deborah Brown and places itself
at the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of subject. These poems
delineate the constellation of family, using her own as model. In these
wry, yet somehow hungry, poems, she brings us family life filled with her
grandmother's laughter, her mothers anger, her sister's difficult death.
She juxtaposes wonderful contrasts, such as her husband's tuna sandwich
with her own poems ( "The Perfect Sandwich" ). As the poet says in "The
Death of a Mouse," This is a family story.

Grace Mattern's Fever of Unknown Origin rests upon imagery from the
natural world to express human feelings of passion, tenderness, and
exaltation. The birth of a child, children and family, household tasks
(the outstanding "Laundry Basket" ), the passing of time, and the seasons
are the subjects. This is poetry of continuity, of blessing. As such it is
quiet and often understated so that the silences speak as profoundly as
the words. The poems "Passing," "Back to the Body," and
the title poem should not be missed.

Rhina P. Espaillat exhibits facility in use of the word in two languages
in Mundo y Palabra: The World & the Word: the first four poems are in
both Spanish and English.. For the most part, this is formal verse,
traditional, rhymed poetry and Ms. Espaillat is a skillful master of the
forms she uses, such as the sonnet. The poet's dry wit shines in two of
them: "The Quetzal "and "Six of One." Among other poems, "Bodega,"
"Solstice" and "You Call Me By Old Names" are outstanding.

In Coastal Bop, the final chapbook in the series, poet Betsy Sholl weaves
jazz, the music of everyday noise, and the sounds of coastal waters into
her narrative. We hear gospel music mixed with the sounds of the shower
while learning how a daughter has reached recovery. In the noisy commotion
of moving household appliances, her parent's declining health is the focus.
Monk and Coltrane echo through Ms. Sholl's long, rhapsodic and luxurious
phraseology; the masterful "Half the Music" consists of six sentences
spread over three pages, yet the story is never lost or obscured. It is
fitting that Walking to Windward closes with
poems about the music in our lives.

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