Hard Frost by Sally Moffitt Zaino (NWVS, #104, 2013 WINNER)

In this wonderful collection of poetry it is lovely to see the particular attention Sally Zaino pays to her world, glimpses and snippets of beauty like a current, and the poet immersed in it, always absorbing it. I’m impressed by Zaino’s wide lens and earthly rhythm, and the mature, capable voice that emerges from these sensibilities. “The Scythe” is my favorite. The theme of aging in Hard Frost is consistently poignant and wise.

–Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and The Seed Underground

Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!]

Sally Zaino’s Hard Frost is a collection formed by “wading light,” to borrow a phrase from Hopkins. Sifted by shadows, charged more by earthshine than direct sunlight or any sort of artificial fluorescence, the light of this work does not diminish the darkness. Therein, I believe, lies its power. Here is a light that, as Zaino writes of the art of Georgia O’Keeffe, “must burst through into the place / where she gives it all away.” Indeed, the abiding image of the opening poem, “Why We Band Hummingbirds,” inaugurates the light that filters through this book: a hummingbird, “resting as though dead” in the palm of an ornithologist, “suddenly explodes from his hand: / invisibly fast, unknowably intent, / immeasurably whole, disappearing / toward the darkening trees.” The poetry of this fierce and gentle book does no less.

–Christopher Martin ,Author of Everything Turns Away and A Conference of Birds, founding editor of Flycatcher

Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!]