Don't Ask Me How I Know

A heart in extremity-what hungers, urgencies, hardships drive and deliver us? These poems, like fierce midwives who insist on getting life to its necessity of oxygen, restore power to us, recreate us in the process. We feel what lifts the moment, what comforts and holds us as we lean over the abyss. Even the ability to howl our lostness in a field is a saving volition and bounty this extraordinary poet fearlessly delivers to sustain us.

-Tess Gallagher, author of Is, Is Not

Don't Ask Me How I Know tenderly reveals the forces that shape human experience are more essential than having all the answers. We witness and grieve with her on tarmac and in stairwells, save old yellow sheets from the hospital shredder, reconnect over social media only to then let go. We too grow protective over the most vulnerable, the buck restfully hiding in her yard before making his escape, the beauty of one more day.

-Rosebud Ben-Oni, author of the Alice James Award-Winning If This Is the Age We End Discovery