Thresholds - Beth Kanell

Beth Kanell knows grief and how to write it. Her poems of "widow world" plunge into heartache and come up shining with love. Drawing on Jewish tradition, Greek mythology, and the moody weather of her rural Vermont home, she describes a truth "like this morning's half-cleared skies: one moment blue, one moment dark with rain." The images in Thresholds grow lush in that environment, insisting, through sorrow and illness, on "breath, blood, life itself."

-Judith Chalmer, author, Minnow

Thresholds weaves a widow's world, through memories of mittens cut from wool sweaters, and the "strong arms, dark eyes that saw and loved me well." Well-crafted and rich with imagery, Beth Kanell's poetry informs and delights us with the natural world: "stones heaped as walls," starfish and earthworms regenerating "from the mouth" . . . She writes, "By ten at night the widow's house is tired and whispering," shimmering lines that map the thresholds of illness and aging with precise, fluid language and unflinching honesty. I will return to these poems teeming with courage and hard-earned wisdom: "Don't weep in winter, your nose will run."

-Judith Janoo, author, Just This and After Effects