This Strange Grace by Kelly Slivka
$13.99
Kelly Slivka‘s This Strange Grace is marked by searching questions and startling beauty. Whether writing about London streets or the Colorado mountains, the domestic sphere or the risks of memory, the author uncovers existential struggles that are, “like the human heart, perennial.” If annealing, as Slivka reminds us, is “the/strengthening of metal/through heat/and pressure,” her own facility with language and uncompromising vision are essential catalysts for poems that are beautifully crafted and lasting. She understands the deepest lessons of her art—that, in looking at the world, we are also “looking inside, the farther out, the closer/in, back to the beginning, to our moment, to our meaning”—and the result is a debut of stunning maturity and power.
–Ned Balbo, author of The Cylburn Touch-Me-Nots and 3 Nights of the Perseids
The poems in Kelly Slivka‘s revelatory debut This Strange Grace flourish in the ephemerality of a daisy-swept hillside; so, too, do they embrace the languishing of the perennial—the enduring tremble of aspen crowns, our desire to return to the nurturing landscape of home, then set out once more. Slivka writes, “My hands will go empty, my gifts / are unbearable,” yet each poem unfolds here with deftly acute attention to the world moving onward around us, how we’re “tucked in with it, farther into the wilderness, thickets.” A collection deeply rooted in ecological knowledge and memory, Slivka’s steady ease with each line calms the ache of our own mortality with sage proverbs like “I mean to say, we cannot but be here, always,” while also navigating an intrepid willingness to return again and again to the unanswerable questions, the mysteries we may never unfold. And then there are the questions the poet allows to pulse within us—isn’t “the music / of the goose eggs hatching, like the human heart, perennial?”
–Matty Layne Glasgow, author of deciduous qween(Red Hen Press)
Terri (verified owner) –
This book is a treasure trove of poetic insight into nature, love, loss, and existential questions of meaning. Slivka’s deep observations of the world we inhabit provide detailed descriptions of the marvels of the natural world both large and minute, visible and unseen. Her creative writing style and fluid use of language exposes readers to alternative ways of thinking and seeing, encouraging us to challenge well-worn thought patterns with new perspectives. This is a book I will delight in reading and rereading, knowing I will gain new insight and inspiration while reveling in creative and thoughtful poetry about the mysteries of being.