Well-traveled, engaged, and open-eyed, Carol Park invites the reader to enter her profoundly empathetic experience-spanning cultures, profound challenges, and deep joys, and taking refuge in the several "strange harbors" into which she has directed her delicate craft. All those who appreciate life as a pilgrimage will find a good companion here.-Scott CairnsCarol Park's gorgeous and poignant debut collection, Songs Sharp and Tender, is a love letter to the self in relationship with others and the earth, even as it holds space for the grief and loss that comes with deep love. The poems interrogate the fraught identities both personal and political we often bear, mapping out a path to wholeness and redemption found in the natural world and our interconnectedness. The speaker reflects and wonders as she walks with a friend in the woods, "Fog hides our aches and doubts/churning deep-how to make/of midlife days some lasting art?" Through poems of dazzling images and luminous metaphors, Park reflects on the vulnerability of loved ones in illness and the joys and burdens of bearing a self into the world, heartbreaking scenes of a mother's Alzheimer's, a daughter's leaving, the destabilizing moments of alienation and estrangement we all feel at times even with those we are most close to. And, through it all, a plea and affirmation of forgiveness and reconciliation sustains the poems and us as readers, guiding us on a path toward authenticity in a bewildering and beautiful world.-Heathen DerrCompelling, elegant, and remarkably honest, Songs Sharp and Tender is filled with stark, realistic poems that paint an intimate portrait of love, loss, family, and the ever-present need for empathy. In these vibrant poems of nature and biography, Park showcases a true talent for imbuing the smallest human details with authenticity and layered meanings. Each poem maps out the human heart, in all its internal conflicts, with precision and grace. Overflowing with vivid and accessible language, Songs Sharp and Tender is both intellectually stimulating and emotionally engaging, reminding us of the beautiful complexities of being human.-John Sibley Williams
