Chris Dahl

Not Now but Soon

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

I imagine the moment before / that moment we can never go back to, the poet tells us in this collection about the spaces between, the verges. These verses fulfill what poetry is meant to express: emotion beyond definition, like the ache of longing to slow down time. Dahl uses cats, figs, polar bears, aging parents to hint at the heaven you have never been able to chart. She wakes the wild in all of us that longs to range fast and far / through what I can see and into / what I cannot even imagine. -Joanne M. Clarkson, author of The Fates and Hospice House Chris Dahl's Not Now But Soon foreshadows and forecasts minute and monumental griefs and joys as they also simultaneously reach into metaphor and memory to reflect what has come to pass. The poems accumulate their meanings like snow-the satisfying kind that sticks and so delights in the Pacific Northwest-even as it causes daily, generational hazards. This collection's intimacy of the familial set against the seasonal generates a compelling, cyclical read. -Sandra Yannone, author of Boats for Women and The Glass Studio I believe this voice, so at home in her garden, so attuned to the seasons and the coming of fall. That imagery works both on literal and metaphorical levels, and while there's wistfulness, even longing sometimes, for things to stay as they are, the voice never stoops to sentimentality. I appreciate the craft of these poems, the straightforward diction, and clear narrative. I never wonder where we are, who's speaking or what's going on. The metaphors feel natural, yet surprising, as a good metaphor must be. "The List of Griefs" uses metaphor masterfully: "there is avalanche grief / and quicksand grief / and the fierce grief that stamps like elephants / protecting their young." I confidently and emphatically choose Not Now but Soon as the winning manuscript. -Emily Ransdell, Award Judge, author of One Finch Singing, 2022 Concrete Wolf Louis Award Winner

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Concrete Wolf Press
• Seitenzahl: 100
• Erscheinungstermin: 5. Mai 2025
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 6mm
• Gewicht: 159g
• ISBN-13: 9798989948895
• Artikelnr.: 73941606

Autorenporträt

A Pacific Northwest native, Chris Dahl was raised among the brash sighs of fir trees in winter and the soothing lullabies of grasshoppers and crickets in summer. This environment led to a poetic process that she describes as cupping her hand into a murky pond and offering the contents for examination: tadpoles and larvae, moss strands, algae, broken bits of leaves, and other detritus. Maybe even a spider testing itsway along the surface tension of the top. She tries to point out liveliness and interconnectedness, the odd patterns to be found in each sampling, and hopes to reveal glimpses of a different world, half-hidden in this one. Her chapbook, Mrs. Dahl in the Season of Cub Scouts (now out of print), was published after winning Still Waters Press "Women's Words" competition. Her poems have been placed in a wide variety of journals such as Bennington Review, The Main Street Rag, About Place Journal, Split Lip, and, most recently, Naugatuck River Review. Her poems have also appeared in the recent anthologies Purr and Yowl (World Enough Writers) and Thin Places and Sacred Spaces (Amethyst Press) among others. She has had poems nominated both for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize.For close to thirty years Chris has been a board member of the Olympia Poetry Network and edited their monthly newsletter which has included a number of her short essays on the art and craft of poetry. Many of the lessons she passes on came through mentors such as David Wagoner, Heather McHugh, and Sharon Bryan at the UW where she received the equivalent of an MFA. She also learned much from Centrum classes led by Lisel Mueller, Marvin Bell, and both Staffords, William and Kim. She is also grateful for those writers who have shared their knowledge and experiences in book form. Tony Hoagland's Twenty Poems That Could Save America, The Poetry Home Repair Manual by Ted Kooser, and Jane Hirshfield's Ten Windows come to mind-but there are many more. Though she has lived for brief stints in England and Florida, snowbirded in Arizona for twenty years, and set foot on all seven continents, she now lives on a pothole lake within the city limits of Olympia, Washington, with her husband and cat named Sylvie-who, in a previous life, was known as Minnow. She gardens, keeps an eye on the wild ducks and geese, and offers support (mostly moral) to her ninety-plus-year-old mother.This award-winning collection, Not Now but Soon, is her fist full-length poetry collection.