Illuminated by Sandra Thaxter

What to make of a voyage that begins with a lone dory on a vacant beach, takes the reader through the poignant memories of unnamed persons clearly absent and remembered with loving nostalgia, then surrounds the reader with objects whose significance is as mysterious as it is riveting, in dreamlike places from which the speaker escapes with a blend of joy and regret, and after other unexpected road stops ends with vivid scenes from Hiroshima, moving and profoundly lyrical words spoken by a Mesopotamian deity, a prayer of sorts spoken to the ruins of Notre Dame of Paris, gorgeous descriptions of African landscapes, and a requiem for two “Women of Light,” whose names will surprise and, yes, “illuminate” the reader’s imagination and sense of history?

Whatever that trip evokes in you, reader, I suspect you’ll be glad you took it, and will return home with intangible but valuable souvenirs.

–Rhina P. Espaillat

Sandra Thaxter’s new chapbook, Illuminated, conveys the sensation that we are in the company of a restless and compassionate spirit who skims the globe, settling briefly in one spot, then another in search of illuminated encounters.  It is filled with lovely images.   

–Rebecca Robertson

Vivid, lyrical, and generous, Sandra Thaxter’s poems invite us into a world without divisions. Here where the sea ebbs into sky, and history is ever-present, “There is no time to let a day go by / without being in full pitch alive.” And to be alive, she shows us, is to look closely, and remember. In this way everything–a tide’s “ruffled crust”; old love letters with their “rounded cursive rolling / across so many yellow legal sheets”; a bomb cruelly dropped–is an opportunity to bear witness, and hold memory with us. The bud, the coffee grounds, the half-knit sock: Time never stops, and pain is unavoidable, but we can at least “make a life / of small things.”

–Kate Bolick