Hard Feelings by Elizabeth R. McCarthy

Hard Feelings, Elizabeth McCarthy’s second poetry collection, is filled with close observations of birds and other wildlife found in the Vermont countryside. Through metaphor and simile, form and imagination, the poet transforms these observations into the language of poetry. In the title poem, the last wild apples of the season are likened to grudges that linger and ferment, becoming “sour little/hearts that/rot in place.” In “Scuttled Memories,” an extended maritime metaphor evokes the sense of time passing when we leave our grief and regrets “stuck in the wooden hull/of memory.” Yet these are ultimately celebratory poems, full of the joy of discovery, like the old milkweed seeds that “burst open/the pod door — escaping/to whorl and dance/in the autumn sun.”

–Angela Patten, author of The Oriole & the Ovenbird, In Praise of Usefulness and other books.

In Elizabeth McCarthy’s beautiful, new collection, Hard Feelings, we enter a world of sandhill cranes, field crickets, spring peepers, odd cats, and cleansing rain.  Present and thankful for ordinary moments, McCarthy shares her deep connection to nature and the whispered wisdom she receives.  She speaks to us of her preferred world, “where understanding / is the sunrise.”  Reverently hanging items of laundry in the summer sun, McCarthy writes about, “pinning them in silent prayer,” and we experience the day through her appreciative eyes.  These are poems that offer solace, even when processing grief.  Above all else, these are poems of hope, “for those who / believe in destiny / delivered in the night / of each new month.”

 —Cristina M. R. Norcross, Founding Editor of Blue Heron Review; author of The Sound of a Collective Pulse and other titles