Always Room for Interpretation by Deborah Rasmussen

Rasmussen’s Always Room for Interpretation is a meditation on the past, an examination of the present, and a brief glimpse into the future. The poems in this book urge us to appreciate where we’ve been and to keep going, because what else can we do? Through subtle imagery, both natural and human-constructed, Rasmussen asks us to consider time and place and how these elements converge to shape our realities. Full of love, connection, and tenderness, these are poems to savor, to read again and again when the time is right.

–Darci Schummer, former editor of The Thunderbird Review and author of Six Months in the Midwest, The Ballad of Two Sisters, and The Book of Orion

The poems in this slender collection are bountiful, breathing life into the ancestors, breathing the story into the still photograph, in language that unlocks the senses. They are written in lines so accessible and subtle that, reading the words, I was often one beat behind feeling their deep reverberation, and then I did. A gift. These poems hold sorrow tenderly with threads of hope.

“Still you’ll keep those festive bulbs safe just in case

by chance, there will be reason

to light them one more time.”

The poems themselves radiate the softest light, giving voice to what is left unspoken.

“The heart, it seems, can hear

what ears only wish for.”

–Deborah Cooper, Author of Blue Windows and former Duluth, MN, Poet Laureate

These are great poems. This collection by Deborah Rasmussen captures vibrant moments, like “Two Moose Cross a Northern Minnesota Lake” and “Under the Covers on New Year’s Day.”  Her narrative poems meditate on time as a river, bringing joy and carrying it away.

Rasmussen is tuned to the perfect and imperfect and to the present moment, unfolding. These are also stories of those who remain steadfast, sowing the ground and looking outward. Here are stories of immigrant grandparents who have left their first language behind, a brother who has drowned, an irrevocable loss, and she and her husband coping with cancer.

In vivid images and spare language, Rasmussen has skillfully woven these poems in a way that acknowledges grief and yet remains awake and welcoming to love and luminous beauty.

–Sheila Packa, poet, author of Surface Displacements and other books. Former Duluth, MN, Poet Laureate