Thankful Thursday: Sandy Longhorn & a Review on Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room

Sandy did an incredible review of my book, Letters From the Emily Dickinson Room  on her blog here.

As a poet, it always makes me so happy when readers/reviewers really *get* what's happening--


Here we have a speaker adrift in a world that often feels directionless, a speaker who desires nothing more than connection and yet finds that connection difficult because of the very fact that she is a poet: "the broken ones become artists," says the father in "Letter to a Past Life."  




And I loved this paragraph --




In "Quiet Collapse in the Dharma Shop," we are told:
"I celebrate small things
.......--apples, beetles, faith---"

I love that 'faith' is a 'small thing' here.  Throughout the book, Kelli manages to take the ordinary moments of a woman's life and transform them into the extraordinary, the special, the saved.  She is unafraid to tell the truth about what it means to be a poet as well as a mother, daughter, wife, and lover, and how sometimes those worlds don't always mesh.

~

Yes, exactly-- sometimes those worlds don't mesh and as I wrote this book, I struggled through them myself.

There were anxious times that challenged me personally and throughout the manuscript.  I didn't want the book not to risk, so I included difficulties I dealt with as well as poems that still make me feel a little vulnerable.

I think that's important though.  I think we all need to risk something when we write.

I've been thankful others have connected with the book and thankful for Sandy for taking the time to read it and write such a thoughtful review on her blog.  



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