Skein of Light (Airlie Press, 2014)
2015 FINALIST for Eric Hoffer Grand Prize Book Award
HONORABLE MENTION in Poetry category
McPherson illumines scenes of the world we all share. With a deft hand for handling language, she composes sketches that draw a distant Paris near and lament the distance between two lovers. In this life that contains both living and dead, the reader sees her, "joins" her in her attempt to "haul in every trick of light / and birdsong I can net / to keep afloat." These well-crafted, meditative poems paint pictures of everyday scenes in which McPherson's words coalesce the meaning of communication:
"Now every handmade shift in my color-coded closet / is trying to dress up what you mean to say."
-- Eric Hoffer prize judge
Karen McPherson is a poet and translator, a member/editor of the Airlie Press publishing collective, and a professor of French at the University of Oregon.
From the Publisher: "The luminous poems in Karen McPherson’s Skein of Light pull and gather toward horizons of reflection. In language that repeatedly reveals what it can and cannot do, the poet maps landscapes of memory where sharp-edged questions disturb the stillness. The personal and human are deftly threaded through a natural world made legible in flights of birds, bending grasses, rock striations. And through this open work, the reader steps into a place both familiar and unknown" -- Airlie Press
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