Meet the Blue by Robin J. Kemkes

“Robin Kemkes’ poems in Meet the Blue reside in the spaces between mythology and the north woods. Her words “slip through a crack in the sky,” into a place that can be sometimes dark and foreboding. Kemkes uses luscious imagery, so the reader can smell “fertile decay,” see the “miniscule universe of moss.” Her use of unexpected line breaks adds to the poems’ magic. Juxtaposed with Georgian mythology and villages of the Greater Caucasus, Kemkes’ poems allow readers to find connections to the poet’s world(s) located somewhere inside.”

–Karla Huston, Wisconsin Poet Laureate 2017-2018

“Written with a clear voice and a moral center, the poems in Meet the Blue explore the melancholy of a shifting time and the beauty left in its wake. Robin Kemkes composes lines that are rich yet sparse, in rhythms that evoke the mood of ritual. She moves with grace and nuance across landscapes of myth and late empire, into the layers of inner experience where she writes with attention to mystery. Long after reading, one is left with a feeling of affection for the worlds this book has brought to life.”

–Sean Akerman, author of The Magnitudes