Dancing Back the Cranes
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Author: Edith Rylander
Reviews:
"Edith Rylander is one of those rare voices—a voice of the earth. Her poems are hard and clear as quartz crystals plucked from Minnesota Granite. They smell like black dirt, deep woods, and newborn lambs. They sound like wild wings at sunrise and the whispering of aspen leaves. And because Edith sings of the earth, she sings of us as well—of dreams and sorrow, loss and hope and joy. Listen to the singing. Listen to a voice of the good earth."
– Douglas Wood, author of Old Turtle
"Edith Rylander, in these fine poems, reminds us that everything that really happens in this universe happens not in the shopping mall or department office but in your garden, your barn, your kitchen, if you keep your eyes open, your brain moving, and your language alive. 'Lambing' is one of the best American sequences about the power and mystery of nature. That sequence—and all her poems about country life—are sharp, clear and true, without our American sentimentality and nostalgia about nature and rural life."
– Bill Holm, author of Boxelder Bug Variations, Coming Home Crazy, and Landscape of Ghosts
"Edith Rylander writes fine poems for physical things, for difficult, dirty work and dumb animals, for the truth, even when it's not pretty. In nets of plain words, she catches the specifics of her life and knows their meaning. Her poems live at the root. Edith keeps whole vision and good humor in the face of what would drag us down. Digging potatoes in a drought year, she can 'fall into bed with tired bones singing praise.' Failing to coax life into dying newborn lambs, she is stoic: 'Take a keep breath,' she tells us. 'Start over.'"
– Nancy Paddock, author of the play, Planting in the Dust
"The poems in Dancing Back the Cranes by Edith Rylander, who has been seriously writing for thirty years, are elegant and wise. Like good water, the poems flow from within, cycle around and reflect light. They know the seasons and soil, the animals and the trees. Rylander writes as if the earth herself were listening, and we are nurtured by that relationship. In Dancing Back the Cranes, the earth breathes back, and we are satisfied."
Reviews:
"Edith Rylander is one of those rare voices—a voice of the earth. Her poems are hard and clear as quartz crystals plucked from Minnesota Granite. They smell like black dirt, deep woods, and newborn lambs. They sound like wild wings at sunrise and the whispering of aspen leaves. And because Edith sings of the earth, she sings of us as well—of dreams and sorrow, loss and hope and joy. Listen to the singing. Listen to a voice of the good earth."
– Douglas Wood, author of Old Turtle
"Edith Rylander, in these fine poems, reminds us that everything that really happens in this universe happens not in the shopping mall or department office but in your garden, your barn, your kitchen, if you keep your eyes open, your brain moving, and your language alive. 'Lambing' is one of the best American sequences about the power and mystery of nature. That sequence—and all her poems about country life—are sharp, clear and true, without our American sentimentality and nostalgia about nature and rural life."
– Bill Holm, author of Boxelder Bug Variations, Coming Home Crazy, and Landscape of Ghosts
"Edith Rylander writes fine poems for physical things, for difficult, dirty work and dumb animals, for the truth, even when it's not pretty. In nets of plain words, she catches the specifics of her life and knows their meaning. Her poems live at the root. Edith keeps whole vision and good humor in the face of what would drag us down. Digging potatoes in a drought year, she can 'fall into bed with tired bones singing praise.' Failing to coax life into dying newborn lambs, she is stoic: 'Take a keep breath,' she tells us. 'Start over.'"
– Nancy Paddock, author of the play, Planting in the Dust
"The poems in Dancing Back the Cranes by Edith Rylander, who has been seriously writing for thirty years, are elegant and wise. Like good water, the poems flow from within, cycle around and reflect light. They know the seasons and soil, the animals and the trees. Rylander writes as if the earth herself were listening, and we are nurtured by that relationship. In Dancing Back the Cranes, the earth breathes back, and we are satisfied."
– CarolAnn Russell, author of The Red Envelope, The Tao of Women, and Feast
"A gardener's a farmer's, a householder's, a woman's voice rings through these poems of lament and praise."
– Ursula K. LeGuin, author of The Earthsea Trilogy, The Left Hand of Darkness, and Always Coming Home
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