Lineage Songs by Angie Minkin

In Lineage Songs, Angie Minkin asks: “…I carry the weight. How do I rise in the morning, brush my teeth…” In this luminescent and moving collection, the poet skillfully answers her own question through dazzling narrative poems both personal and universal. Minkin illuminates what it means to live in a female body, and to be a mother, sister, friend and partner in a loving marriage where “we live with shadows but still seek sun together.” We travel with the poet to farmer’s markets and national parks, Oregon coast and an English apple orchard, to Nicaragua and Cuba, and many times to the Gulf of Mexico and her beloved Oaxaca. Always, this is a poet who, when faced with personal and collective sorrows, makes a conscious choice to celebrate the natural world and to express love. “Let me be your gnarled gray tree rooted in sand” she writes in a letter to a dead friend who visits in the form of an egret, and makes peace with knowing that the questions she asks her friend will remain unanswered. Gratitude for how women, the living and the dead, support and comfort one another runs throughout this beautiful collection, as does her admiration for the hard-won wisdom age brings. As Minkin grapples with life’s complexities, she reminds us to “Touch the earth, / it throbs / even in the longest dark / see how fire calls back the sun.” This collection is a loving gift in difficult times. May we all embrace “This crone’s vision: kinship, unfettered breath / humming arias / unfinished songs” and live as heart-centered as this poet.

–Robin Michel, author of Beneath a Strawberry Night Sky and Things Will Be Better n Bountiful

In her compelling & meditative collection, LINEAGE SONGS, Angie Minkin writes a tribute to the familial & earthly past, a hymn for the present & a homage for the unknown future.These tender poems are mature in their reflections & documentary in their approach, each moment a flash of emerald and wonder. What do we inherit & what will we leave behind when the street noise softens to a hum? As I read and reread these poems, I was reminded that no matter who we are, no matter where or when we walk the earth, all of us can choose to live with shadows      but still seek sun together.

–Joan Kwon Glass, author of DAUGHTER OF THREE GONE KINGDOMS & NIGHT SWIM

With a poet’s longing to create meaning out of loss, love, abuse, history, family and difficult life choices, Angie Minkin turns to the masters for inspiration: Whitman, Mary Oliver, Gershwin and Neruda. With a self-assured hand, she loses her way, wanders, and wonders. And from that uncertain place, finds her way home. A beautiful, wide-ranging travelogue of a life lived with open eyes, open heart and open mind.

–Joan Gelfand, author of “The Long Blue Room”