In the Tilling by Donna Isaac

Donna Isaac‘s new collection of poems takes us along on a journey to her childhood. Liberally laced with food she grew to love from avocados to blue crab to artichokes, the book is a literal feast (yes, recipes are included!) that takes the reader back to their own roots. Each poem is like a slice of freshly baked pie, evoking time, place, and people of luscious newness. This is a book to dip into and savor—an afternoon treat that enchants you. It’s a treat that beckons you back for another and yet another taste–tart, sweet, and deeply satisfying.

–Stanley Kusonoki, author of Shelter in Place, Items in the News

“The soul can be fertile like loam,” Donna Isaac writes in In the Tilling. The book retraces a childhood in the South in poems so deliciously detailed you can taste the fresh-caught crab and hear the football games. Fear of leaping into a swimming hole resonates with a fear of leaping into young adulthood. Amidst loved ones’ aging, her own aging, and the breath of a Minnesota winter, readers will also hear a “red-tailed hawk rising like a song” and see “incarnadine sumac aflame on the edge of the road.”

–Janna Knittel, author of Real Work, finalist for the 2023 Minnesota Book Award

“In the Tilling is a powerful collection, a delight to read–lush, with an upbeat voice, curious, observant of the world of foods, plants, and the life of ancestors, childhood, friends. The book is very lyrical, fluid, wonderfully clear and written with great liveliness.”

–Margaret Hasse, author of The Call of Glacier Park, Summoned and five other books of poetry.