When The House Is Quiet

by Kirsten Jones Neff

WINNER OF THE STARTING GATE AWARD

What People Are Saying About
When The House Is Quiet

Don't let the delicate grace of Kirsten Neff's voice fool you: in these poems chronicling the diurnal orbits of a woman's life, the raising of a family and the familiarity of a long marriage, she reveals with deft precision the indelibility of all we can and cannot hold, "the place/where the leaf of ourselves lifts slightly/in the chill wind." Her vision is at once of "the exquisite painting into which we were born" and the sidelong awareness of our frailty and mortality, her language as tender but as sure as a hand resting on a sleeping child.

                                         ~Kate Moses

                                           Author of Cakewalk and Wintering, A Novel of Sylvia Plath

In her prize-winning collection of poems, When The House Is Quiet, Kirsten Neff has given us light: from the “meager wisps of sun” in a winter kitchen to “Technicolor evening promises” of childhood to light glistening from “ardent grapes”.  These poems gleam and surprise with the beauty of their language and the power of close observation as a woman explores the permutations of family. Ms Neff uses the lens of memory to capture breathtaking moments of connection to her children, her husband, her landscape, her self.  These are rich poems, worthy of repeated savoring.

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Kirsten Jones Neff is a writer, gardening teacher, and filmmaker who lives with her family in Northern California.  Her work has appeared in several PBS films, periodicals and anthologies, including When The Muse Calls: Poems for The Creative Life, 34th Parallel, Ode, The Believer Englishcafe.com, WriterAdvice.com, The Poetry Farmer’s Almanac, and The Marin Poetry Center Anthology.  This is her first collection of poetry.