Leaving Paradise

Gail Thomas in her powerful book, Leaving Paradise, declaims in the title poem, “I chose wilderness” and readers will be thankful that she did. There is a wrenching grief in many of these poems, but the countervailing and stronger direction is always towards tenderness, always towards joy and affection for the natural world. We are taken with Thomas’s bravery as she ventures forth on “the future trails ahead/ on stony ground.” “Tangled roots course/ like bruised veins at every angle and still “the earth of sweet surprise offers…jewels/ hewn after rough stones are pressed.” In cento and rhyme, in golden shovel and erasure, in ghazal and ode, Gail Thomas performs magic in recreating the taste and struggle, both bitter and sweet, of a life. This is writing that matters! - - Howard Faerstein, author of Out of Order and Googootz Leaving Paradise is about the spaces between, about being in two places at once: on the beach between high and low tides; being swallowed into the belly of a whale and spit back out again, “still breathing.” For Gail Thomas, and she speaks for us all, ripe life sits beside life’s passing, and the parts of life we must shed to move forward. Almost always her poems are rooted in the natural world, which mirrors our own cycles and astonishments. Like the hiker stretching over a storm-felled tree to continue on a path, or salamanders making an improbable road crossing to survive, these poems straddle, find balance, and move beyond the known into the beautiful unknown. Rebecca Hart Olander, editor/director of Perugia Press, author of Uncertain Acrobats
ASIN: 1948521199
VSKU: BVV.1948521199.A
Condition: Acceptable
Author/Artist:Thomas, Gail
Binding: Paperback
Note: Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.
Condition Notes: The item is very worn but is perfectly usable. Signs of wear can include aesthetic issues such as scratches, dents, worn and creased covers, folded page corners and minor liquid stains. All pages and the cover are intact, but the dust cover may be missing. Pages may include moderate to heavy amount of notes and highlighting, but the text is not obscured or unreadable. Page edges may have foxing age related spots and browning . May NOT include discs, access code or other supplemental materials.