The Price of the Repair by Jennifer Bisbing

 

“In Bisbing’s rooted and riveting chapbook, we encounter a poetic voice that luminously inhabits the Western desolation without romanticizing it. There is a keen light in the eyes of this stoicism, at the heart of these petitions to wind and rock, which land so artfully ‘somewhere between the sky and riverbed.’”

–Chris Dombrowski, author of The River You Touch: Making a Life on Moving Water. He is also the author of Body of Water: A Sage, A Seeker, and the World’s Most Elusive Fish, and of three acclaimed collections of poems.

 

“I like the way these poems jar my brain in such unexpectedly sly ways. ‘Devouring Distance’ shifts the ground beneath our expectations, conjuring distant emotions or childhood dreams. If these poems fail to jumpstart your imagination, then my friend, you’ve been in town too long.”

–Swain Wolfe, Montanan author of The Lake Dreams the Sky, The Parrot Trainer, The Boy Who Invented Skiing, and The Woman Who Lives in the Earth (translated into fourteen languages)

 

“The poems are full of intriguing imagery and fascinating turns of phrase.”

–Charlotte Pence, director of the Stokes Center for Creative Writing at University of South Alabama

 

“One thing that strikes me about [Bisbing’s] work is that, though there appears longing for specific ‘others,’ there is no evidence that life is incomplete without ‘other.’ This is remarkable on so many levels, and especially in terms of poetry, so refreshing.”

–Jeff Kober, Montanan award-winning actor and author of Embracing Bliss

 

Whether she is talking about lookouts, small-town cafes, a family homestead or “No Vacancy” motels, Jennifer Bisbing’s work captures the depth and complexity of a woman’s life in the rural west, whether she is describing her visit to the haunting landscapes of grass slanting “toward the earth in prayer” of her grandfather’s homestead or seeing the checkered floors of small-town cafe shabby from “tired feet.”

–Caroline Patterson, author of The Stone Sister, Ballet at the Moose Lodge