Navigation by Linda Elkin

$19.99

 

The resonant poems of Navigation have their compass set on the heart’s true north and, as they move through even the darkest times, appear lit from within, “like the body interrupted/ by love becomes bright.”  With a sensuous imagination (“my body voiced into life”), a stalwart spirit, a consent to life’s clamor, a fine ear–these poems make emotion intelligible; they distill and illuminate experience–its splendor, suffering, “sudden grace.”  An eloquent collection, a lasting pleasure to read.

–Eleanor Wilner

 

What is navigated in Linda Elkin’s graceful and moving first book? Nothing less than the enormity of the human heart. These poems, with their luminous surfaces and resonant depths, forge meaning from mystery, difficulty, and silence as much as from Eros, art, ripe peaches, and the sea. Though “we know the story is mostly about suffering,” as Elkin writes, her words help to map a way through. “Love gave me an island to keep in sight,” she says in a different poem. Reading Navigation, I feel blessed to be traveling toward that place with her.

–Kasey Jueds

 

 

Description

Navigation

by Linda Elkin

$19.99, Full-length, paper

978-1-63534-834-7

2019

Linda Elkin’s poetry has been published in numerous publications, including The Bloomsbury Review, Green Mountains Review, Midwest Quarterly, Southern Poetry Review, Tar River, 5AM, Antiphon, and in other journals and anthologies, including Kindled Terraces: American Writers in Greece (Truman State University Press). She is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, and has been awarded writers residencies at Soapstone and the Vermont Studio Center. Linda grew up in NYC and now lives in Oakland, California.

The poems in Linda Elkin’s Navigation capture the luminous inner being of all things with a quiet, direct music. They faithfully record a moment of revelation in the lives of lovers or track the genesis of an artwork in supple language which speaks eloquently for authentic observation and genuine surprise. The stories they tell ring true. These lyrics embody an emotional journey in which details shine forth like lighthouses along a rugged coast. Taking us from here to there with a minimum of fuss, they swing into action in precisely those places where words often fail. “Sex,” writes the poet, “takes up more space/ than the space it actually happens in.” Similarly, these dignified, savvy voyages make our world much larger, and richer, than it usually is.

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