Crossings by Kathryn Kimball

My warning to readers: these are remarkably absorbing poems, in more than one sense. I found myself absorbed by them, warmly embraced by the worlds and lives they themselves have absorbed and made their own. Scene after scene, one loved person after another, from a mother working the potato fields twelve hours a day in 1939, to the “poems de terre” of a dream lover in Paris, and of aging kitchens and sickrooms, Kathryn Kimball plays a well-tempered instrument of language. Yes, “the inextricable fluidity of being” is shadowed everywhere in this book by mortality—and enriched everywhere by wholeness. I was rapt and wrapped by its beauty.

–Alicia Ostriker, author of The Volcano and After New York Poet laureate, 2018-2021

In these emotionally nourishing “poems de terre,” Kimball digs into the furrows of the past to harvest memories that connect grandparents, children, and grandchildren through both hurt and a love that is as constant as “mossy trees/ and stones” are “in their being.” Crossings is at heart an elegy to women who “lived with verve” and to men who, even as ghosts, continued to guide the poet through understanding “the sharpness of desire.”

–Mihaela Moscaliuc, author of Cemetery Ink

Crossings is dedicated to the poet’s family, which is no surprise given the characters they provide–and the way Kimball captures them: a grandma who “took the stairs to Bingo Heaven,” a father “mowing away soap and whiskers,” a mother who says she “married the wrong man, but got the right children,” and calls for her “tube of power” (“Royal Red” lipstick) on her deathbed–and even the cat who “stalks the prey-like object / of my sadness.” But there’s more here than poignant family remembrances. Two of my favorite poems are “Jung Potatoes”–a sexy dream that leads to self-awareness–and “Palimpsest,” which is built around Sappho fragments. A rich ride, this book!

–Ellen Doré Watson, author of pray me stay eager