A THOUSAND RAINBOWS FLASHING by Pattie Palmer-Baker

Pattie Palmer-Baker asks questions of the muteness of the world, even while she hears its color and brilliance. A Thousand Rainbows Flashingconfronts grief and bereavement frontally… or sometimes with a slant that Emily Dickinson might appreciate. Thick, difficult, surprising, obvious — all the pain and ambiguity of mortal flesh. The book’s occasion is the loss of her blue-eyed husband. But memory of other losses — mother, father — soon complicate and enrich. The author bravely tries to “count the many kinds of dark,” only to discover that brightness is present everywhere, also. “The glitter of his name, the shine of his soul…” — and above all, “The blue of your eyes.” By the end of this rich little book, the author has brought the questions of time and love and death to a broader inquiry, rangy and deep and all too human. Pattie Palmer-Baker finds light even in darkness, beginnings even in endings. As a good poet must.

—David Oates, author of Surprise Comes Slowly (Kelson Books)

The rainbow in Pattie Palmer-Baker’s A Thousand Rainbows Flashing holds all the brilliant colors you imagine, as well as gray and black and the darkness of loss. Holds sorrow, but also the inescapable joys of nature’s beauty and the profound potentials of the permeable boundaries between science and spirit. Several of the poems ask grief’s deeply perplexing questions that only time and the bruised soul can answer: “Does it hurt, I ask the maple, / sumac, dogwood, gingko / when red slow-burns your leaves / when yellow usurps green…?” Palmer-Baker’s astonishing, heartbreaking, gorgeous chapbook is a many-hued painterly portrait of bottomless longing filled with shadows and light—yes, the brightest light of all—enduring love.

—Lana Hechtman Ayers, author of Sky Overand The Autobiography of Rain