Things Live After by Carol Nolde

In her exquisite chapbook titled Things Live After, Carol Nolde takes us from “wheel rutted streets of Pompeii” to a farmhouse on an auctioneer’s block where once treasured possessions “scatter / like dandelion parachutes in the wind.”  One after another, the poems transport us to lives past and present, by means of sensory details and subtly controlled language that recall the pastoral invitations of Robert Frost. Nolde’s music chimes throughout to create an ongoing symphony of sights, sounds, and textures. Many of the poems preserve personal history of American rural beginnings which continue to give life to our country. The same generous attention brings us women laundering on rocks along the banks of the Nile, ceremonies on the Ganges, darkness of a Sahara night camp. Original images delight with surprise and accuracy of aptness. Carol Nolde‘s poems “live after” in the reader’s consciousness. We are grateful for this gift of memorable poetry.

–Charlotte Mandel, author of To Be the Daylight

“Carol Nolde calls out to a rural past in poems crafted as expertly as a hand-made table…With warmth Nolde rebuilds a heritage.”

–Molly Peacock

“The images in this little book grow from Carol Nolde‘s deep roots on a farm and in family, and in her hand become art.”

–Deena Linett

“…Tenderness and compassion quietly saturate this graceful book of hopeful, beautiful poems.”

–Emily Fragos