Midwest Musings by Heather D. Frankland

As fearlessly self-examining as Heather Frankland’s poems are, they are also elusively stoic and emboldened to hold intimate knowledge of the world–and her relations with others–sacred. Through her exploration of opposing desires to wild or to tame, to teach or to unlearn, to hide or to draw out, to welcome or to warn, to love or to withhold love, or to thirst or to deluge, these dazzling contradictions have been deftly honed into tantalizing poem-secrets.

–Richard Greenfield, author of Subterranean.

“I will drench you awake,” Heather Frankland promises, and she does with poems of place and nature that also track the wildness, settled-ness, and sometime wilderness of girlhood and womanhood. From poems to her grandmother that celebrate grit and silence to poems that trace the subversive power of herself as a young woman, Frankland’s poems manage the rare trick of balancing love and family with the tougher territories of alienation and grief in a way that feels earned, authentic, and surprising.  “But I am a girl hiding in the field/I am creating a. map of the best places to hide,” she tells us, and we believe her.  This is a book to hold in your heart.

–Sheila Black, author of Radium Dream.

Frankland’s unique voice brings the ordinary alive. Her keen observations are revealing and honest.

–Elise Stuart, author of My Mother and I, We Talk Cat, and Poet Laureate Emerita of Silver City and Grant County.

Heather Frankland writes thoughtful poems that exhibit a strong sense of place and an equally strong compassion for people alive and dead, animals, even a moth and a creek. She examines herself with an equally keen eye, her feelings, her attachments, her mistakes, her pretensions. These are non pretentious poems that seek wisdom and often find it.

–Marge Piercy author of 20 poetry books, most recently On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light, 17 novels, short stories, and 5 nonfiction books.