Francine Marie Tolf

Francine Marie Tolf's poetry is like the leaves she describes in one of her poems: "green fire in morning sun." Spill Some New Brightness opens in a place where grief and gratitude walk hand in hand: "Sometimes something wonderful occurs, / a sister you thought exotic but brittle / becomes your best friend, maybe through / mysterious and troubling circumstances. Maybe / she has a breakdown. Speaks with demons. / Walks through bright and terrible fields." ("Sometimes").In this spiritual gathering of pain, love, beauty, and injustices, devastating moments surface: "I thought of that immigrant woman clutching her child / as ice-black water rose, the merciless moment / she had to breathe ocean into her lungs / and I said out loud, Where were You? / How could You let this happen? / No answer except diamonds sparkling on lake water." ("Hidden Beach").We spend time with women, sisters, mothers, people on the bus and in the grocery store, assisted living patients, children, trees, tiger lilies, "mallard ducks swimming in melted snow puddles."Tolf gives us the beauty of ordinary but dazzling moments: "Blinding white, the sudden wings beat / in front of my windshield, as if / the gull had dropped from a horizon / of sapphire sea and chalk-bright cliff / instead of this dreary March sky / hanging low over a parking lot edged / with a Dollar Tree, a Taco Bell, / black-crusted snow." ("Transfiguration in North Minneapolis").Compassion for animals, strength from nature, a community of gratitude to help heal and experience a whole life ... these are the gifts Tolf offers to readers in her latest collection.

Francine Tolf began writing poems when she was 20--at first rhyming poems, fledgling sonnets and ballads, and later through several decades developed her craft in various forms without losing her love and gift for rhythm, sound, and music: "My golden hair is turning gray, / my sins are sinned, my wild oats flung. / Now's the time to pen a book / of rhymes for children old and young."The importance and appeal of nature, relationships, language, and the mysteries of our intricate connections with each other recur in these poems: "For now there's neither eye nor voice nor sun / to question what you are, or feel, or see. / In kindness, I grant anonymity, / a gift no dawn can ever give. So come / and know some peace a while, be part of me."These poems are comforting while mindful of the uncertainties that challenge our lives: "There is no one to cry my secret to. / A deaf wind whispers, Even if there were, / your lover could not share it if he knew. / He could not pierce the secret to its core / and share it with you even if he knew."Francine's late sister, Gale Tolf, created the beautiful ink and watercolor drawings. Gale found inspiration in myth, legend, and fairytale, a perfect complement to these thoughtful, loving, and life-fulfilling poems.

"Elegant, aching, and irresistible,Joliet Girlis a heartfelt and honest proof that while every family is different, every family is the same. A beautifully-written account of a remarkable family." - Pete Hautman