The Poem Stands on Its Head by the Window by Bonnie Maurer

Bonnie Maurer tells us in her remarkable new book, “So here we are / long teeth and gums / receding, but where, / into what universe?” These poems investigate that universe, rich with the intermingling of loss and renewal. Maurer portrays sorrows and joys of the every day (“That summer before, I lost the milk song, / the baby wrapped in gypsy cloth”) side-by-side with her pilgrimage to Israel and Poland, where—in the case of the latter—she visits the Warsaw Ghetto, absorbing and addressing the still-palpable grief of her lineage in both cultural and personal terms, “As if we want your stones / to heave our weight in your arms // As if we want your seeds / to sew our necklace of grief.” These stunning poems embrace the present, even when it is paradoxical and puzzling, always with an eye toward “lips / waiting for the salve of his kiss.” I have been an avid reader of Bonnie Maurer’s work for more than forty years, and I always find in it a toehold into a universe of redemption, in which she offers those who have come before her, and her current reader, “the crust of bread to stay alive.”

–George Kalamaras, former Poet Laureate of Indiana (2014–2016)

Maurer’s poems give us indelible portraits of a family’s larger than life members, their loves, losses, traditions and experiences–from the uncle who sold wrecked cars and died in a car wreck to haunting tales of Holocaust survivors whose pain reverberates through the generations. The poems return again to the balm of nature and daily life with always the reminder of the duality, the ever present possibility of evil and above all, the need for forgiveness. These poems startle the reader into new awareness of the richness and humanity of our lives.

–Susan Bettis, feminist scholar, Indianapolis Women’s Spirituality Group founder

In The Poem Stands on Its Head by the Window, Bonnie Maurer writes, “I made myself into a pocket  / for grief.” In this, her latest collection, Maurer rips open that pocket and with clear-eyed relentlessness empties it out. Cancer, lost love, the inevitable aging. Add the section of Holocaust poems—one devastating, prize-winning poem after another, surely earning her the crown of being one of Indiana’s best poets.

–Alice Friman, Blood Weather