Sandra McPherson

Like kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing a broken vessel with lines of tree sap and gold, the poems in Sandra McPherson's new book, Speech Crush, run a vein of intelligence and attention through often harrowing experiences-of deep loss, of scammers and self-immolators, of institutionalization and separations that rival those of Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art." And like the work of Bishop and Leonard Cohen, two poets whose long practice led us to a place whose gates are suffering and wisdom, McPherson's poems ask us to take into ourselves a wrecked, a transformed beauty. Here it is.- Jordan Smith, author of Little Black Train and Common SpiritsReaders intimately acquainted with Sandra McPherson's vivid, metaphorical voice and her wise poetic conscience over the decades-as well as readers encountering her soul-stirring poems of the environment for the first time, or delighted by her daughter's precise musicality in the title poem-will receive blessings beyond measure from Speech Crush. This dazzling treasury celebrates the bejeweled fruitfulness of a woman's life-journey with the strength and tenderness of a redwood's annular rings. This book is a rare and tremendous gift.- Karen An-hwei Lee, author of Rose is a Verb: Neo-Georgics, Sonata in K, Phyla of Joy, Ardor, and In Medias Res

From movie making to medical misadventures, meditations on widowhood to feminist protestations, Expectation Days is a dazzling portrayal of instances in Sandra McPherson's life. Her autobiographical collection uses peculiar and exact language to reflect on a wide range of activities that include grouse hunting, going through airport security after 9/11, and climbing a coastal cliff. From being an unintended child to ceremonializing a lifetime "served," McPherson speaks in both clear and distressing voices from the state of speechless fear that is bereavement. Will the little figures ever reach the monument? A doctor orders me to be on watch. Will the mist pass over their cheeks and clear the strollers' eyes? If so, I'll see it. I'm on watch. I train my eyes on paintings to see if there is any change. --from "On Suicide Watch"

Edge Effect is Sandra McPherson's most original work to date. Constructed in two parts, the collection embraces secretly related worlds: the poetics of natural history and artistic discoveries of self-taught folk artists. Throughout, waves from one poem mark the shores of others. In natural history, an edge effect occurs where two communities, such as land and sea, overlap, that zone becoming more diversified than each of them. McPherson explores this effect in nature and art, questioning our notions of inside and outside, center and margin. Profound and moving, she recasts the very premises of formal understanding in poetry, accommodating at once the arts of nature and the nature of art.

"I count Sandra McPherson as one of the dozen or so truly outstanding American poets who write brilliantly in the Romantic tradition. . . . The God of Indeterminacy brings together a group of exciting poems showing the vital influence of her interest in the blues tradition and in African-American quiltmaking. They are brilliant testimonials to this fruitful wedding of the musical, the visual, and the literary." -- Clarance Major