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