Throughline by Cora McCann Liderbach

Cora McCann Liderbach’s expansive chapbook Throughline honors moments that allow poetry “to knit/together the fractured fault lines” not only of her life, but ours as well.  I love this collection for its startling imagery, its vibrant rhythms, its keen wit and, above all, its earned wisdoms. Most impressive about the collection are Liderbach’s expansive use of subjects (global and local, environmental and domestic, realistic and dream-like) and forms (prose pieces, pantoum, abecedarian, experimental) to create a poetry that insists on joy, beauty and honoring the present moment, insisting: “You’re here now, you’re here.” Yes.

–Philip Terman, author of Our Portion and five other books of poetry, and winner of the Sow’s Ear Chapbook Prize

Cora McCann Liderbach’s enticing collection, Throughline, opens with the speaker saying words billowed out of her in pictures. Whether those pictures include Bessie, the mythical long reptilian body of Lake Erie or Lake Erie itself, the joy of late-life love or the effects of deep brain stimulation, the throughline is finding reasons to celebrate. Liderbach lyrically finds those reasons even when describing years seeking answers as in her poem, “Shaky,” or more directly in “Today: What’s Beautiful.” In her poignant “Suitcase,” the speaker asserts regret is a suitcase / best left by the roadside / resilience means surrendering to what’s true / another name for love. You will never regret reading this collection, as these word pictures are truly other names for love.

–Marion Starling Boyer, winner of the Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize for Ice Hours

Reading Cora McCann Liderbach’s Throughline feels like entering a watercolor sketch through words. The poet deftly wanders corridors of memory, gifting us with heartfelt impressions of life itself.  We can see in her poem “Raft,” …what we missed—10 kids, unmoored, adrift in childhood seas, riding solo, silent—when all we wanted was to float together holding hands. In the specificity of Liderbach’s poems, we find reflections of ourselves and celebrate the way introspection and language come together.

–Linda Goodman Robiner, author of the poetry book Chrysalis