MOON FIRE: Poetry on Skating by Mardelle Fortier

In Moon Fire: Poems on Skating, Mardelle Fortier‘s poetry glides smoothly across the page, leaps and twirls, as she celebrates the beauty of world-class figure skating. Her attention takes in not only on the artistry of the skaters (many of them Olympic champions), but also the music, colors, lights and audience. In this collection, a skater may bend “like a flower,” “fly across frozen tears,” experience an “inner jaguar,” or hear the moon whispering in Italian. Fear falls from a skater “like an old shawl.” Whether you only watch Olympic figure skating during the Olympics, or follow the sport year round, year-after-year, you will enjoy revisiting momentous performances expressed in imaginative and metaphoric language.         

–Wilda Morris, author of Szechwan Shrimp and Fortune Cookies: Poems from a Chines Restaurant, former president of both the Illinois State Poetry Society and Poets and Patrons.