Cocktails with God by Heidi Elaine Hermanson

Hermanson takes readers on the uninhibited open road, where the lusty movements of the world turn to uninhibited conversations with herself, her father, Buddha, a truck driver, and God. She writes with fierce awareness in a language the mystifies the small and familiar and is loaded with philosophical insights. Her poems breathe, stand ready, listening and absent of ego.

–Amy Plettner, author of Undoing Orion’s Belt and Points of Entry

Heidi Hermanson is an itinerant, forever on the road. We are the hitchhikers she has picked up, and our fellow travelers are Grace (and grace) and the Buddha. Hermanson tells us, “There // must be something / beautiful waiting for me / down that dusty road” (“The Road”). And so there is. Hermanson says, “It is in the small things / we see it” (“Too Full”), and her book is a loving, careful recreation of such small wonders. What Hermanson says of a butterfly in “While the Sink Fills” might be said of each of them: “I transcribe your words / on my wings.” And just like that, we have left the road and are in flight. There is no better flying companion than Heidi Hermanson.

–Clif Mason, author of Knocking the Stars Senseless and The Book of Night & Waking

All the characteristics I have always admired in Hermanson’s work are writ large here –

An exacting/fearless attention to the most subtle emotional rumblings, a deep love for the unheralded corners of life, a relationship to place that is as thorough as an old marriage, as sparky as new love. At times her poems feel like conversations had driving a country road at dusk, elsewhere, like the overheard pains and delights of a deeply interior life. Further, when she writes, “I am as sleepy as America,/ eyes half-shut with her hair pinned back,” she shows an ease and deftness with the best of broad ideas.

–Rebecca Rotert, author of Last Night at the Blue Angel and All The Animals We Ever Were