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Unless You Count Birds
Poems
Published by Northstar Press, 2012
Cover painting by Leslie Anderson
Shocking,
really, that it has taken this long for Kathy Weihe's extraordinary
book to find a publishing house wise enough to embrace it. It took a
whole, complicated, passionate, suffering, joyful, thoughtful lifetime
for these poems to come into the world. Weihe's brilliant syntax and
diction, her way to translating a world for her readers, her way of
drawing us in so close to the page our breath is caught--we breathe in
sympathy, empathy, and in surprise as her narratives and the images she
has found to define them grip our hearts and minds. So, it is simple.
Read this book. Buy this book. Read the book again. Celebrate this
poet's voice coming into our world, celebrate the abundance of fine
poems in this collection.
-Deborah Keenan
Willow Room, Green Door: New and Selected Poems, Milkweed Editions, recipient of the Minnesota Book Award for Poetry, 2008
Kathy
Weihe tracks a range of voices and metaphors to bear witness for
contemporary life. With wit and keen observation she reveals the fear,
malice, obsession, and quirkiness that comprise not only the ‘criminal
elements’ in all of us but the diminishment of America. Yet she
celebrates the wonder of the natural world and honors the courage of the
chronically ill. There is no bird she won’t count, no rock she won’t
climb, no room she won’t enter. Her poems force readers to care as
deeply as she does about what she finds.
-Patricia Kirkpatrick
author of Century’s Road and Plowie: A Story from the Prairie
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