Final Deployment by Ann Quinn

From the hills of San Diego to the Live Oaks of Pensacola come poems of a sympathetic imagination. We follow the child of a naval aviator, during the Vietnam era, to the woman she will become. Self-reflection starts in the mind and ends on the page with clear bold words that are trailblazers for a world otherwise unnoticed. Quinn links the arteries of the past with perception and experience that become a moral arbiter – a heart clutching read – each moment in this poet’s history is a sensory one with daydreams and acoustics that come alive interpreting, not imitating, the world. This is what real writing is: spirit and sense, decent loving, an inimitable life, the shining accomplishment of a major debut.

–Grace Cavalieri, “The Poet and the Poem from the Library of Congress”

Ann Quinn’s poems deftly navigate the “essential in between” moments:  the rich silences between words, a child’s slow shift into hard, adult truths, the ever-unknowable passage from life into death. At the same time, her work celebrates the sensuous world with joy and curiosity. Elegaic at core, the poems in Final Deployment are also full of musings on art, precisely conjured memories, tender and fleeting moments with children, and above all, a love for the world in all its mystery and beauty.

–LIA PURPURA, author of 7 collections of essays, poems, and translations. Her awards include a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, NEA and Fulbright Fellowships, and three Pushcart prizes. She is Writer in Residence at The University of Maryland, Baltimore County.