Cottonwood Strong, Bent but Not Broken by Lin Brummels

Lin Marshall Brummels’ poems allude to “family secrets” suspicions, “shadows,” and “doorways without doors.”  In the words of Bob Dylan, “you know something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?”

–Barbara Schmitz, winner of the Nebraska Center for the Book Poetry Awards, 2005, 2015

Cottonwood Strong sings a plaintive song about family dynamics set in an atmosphere of moonlit pastures and whispered secrets.  These lovely poems are like a sign of relief after a storm has passed.

–Karen Wingett, author of Tap Dancing at the Corn Palace and Every Other Year is Odd

In her most recent chapbook, Cottonwood Strong, Lin Brummels relates both some of the light, and some of the darker, nuances of family life in Nebraska. Ever want to learn to roll yer own? In “Dad Loves the Ritual,” watch as he deftly illustrates the entire process and lights up between cows in the milking barn.

From reflections of a childhood on a Nebraska dairy farm, to those of a mother with children who’ve married and begun lives of their own, the poems in Cottonwood Strong explore the significance of place in the development of characters who, as her subtitle acknowledges, may be often “Bent but not Broken.”

–Neil Harrison, author of Story, In a River of Wind, Into the River Canyon at Dusk, and Back in the Animal Kingdom