Cheryl J Fish

Crater and Tower poetically juxtaposes the volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980-the deadliest eruption in United States history-with the attack on The World Trade Center on September 11, 2001-the deadliest terroriest attack in United States history. These historic events haunt the collective American consciousness, and this book touches the collective American soul. First pubished in 2020 during the COVID epidemic, this expanded edition includes several new poems as the author looks back twenty-four years to the second of these two destructive events.

OFF THE YOGA MAT follows three characters approaching 40 on a rollicking journey of love, transformation, and jealousy as Y2K approaches. Nate, a graduate student researching jealousy in Darwin and Shakespeare, denies he ever experiences that emotion. In shielding himself from disappointment, he almost misses out on a scintillating romance. After she breaks up with Nate, Nora, fueled by the desire to have a baby, takes a temporary job at Nokia in Finland. She sweats in the sauna, tries on men like miniskirts, and embraces the Finnish concept of sisu: perseverance despite setbacks. Nate's yoga teacher, Lulu, yearns to get to the bottom of her nightmares of childhood abuse. An experiment concocted by Nate's friends to test his ability to withstand jealousy pushes him into a steamy tryst with Lulu. While she aids her ailing mother in New Orleans, Lulu meets a woman who helps her confront her violent past. After they become lovers, Nate (jealous this time) reconnects with Nora at a wedding. Their boozy nostalgic reunion complicates everything.

Cheryl J. Fish first visited Finland as a Fulbright professor in 2007. Since then she has returned many times to research protest and resistance to mining and extraction in Arctic Fennoscandia in the works of Sami filmmakers, photographers, and artists. However, the landscapes and experiences of the country's saunas, lakes, villages, homes, streets, and parks evoked rich stories and poetry. This unique collection of poems, The Sauna Is Full of Maids, is a reflection on how present-day Finnish life intertwines with folklore and mythology-expressed in the Kalevala, a work of epic poetry compiled from long-lived ballads, songs, and incantations-and advancing modern developments. Accompanied by many of the poet's own photographs, this collection has the kind of rich cultural detail that warms and satisfies the reader with insight and appreciation.