Scattered Showers In a Clear Sky

Scattered showers are always welcome from too clear a sky. The poems here offer the continuing relief of the bit of fanciful yet renewing reality poetry can bring - and does, with wonderful regularity in this book. Higgins gives us "Nature's palpable design" in a kaleidoscope of images: a dozen or so poems of birds writing their own ineffable designs on the world; the glories of a "Junk Drawer"; the closely observed material word of locks and their openings. Images everywhere that bring us home - "Women with feet like cudgels"; the way "the sun crept up and turned its key in my face" and, always the affirming grace: "After all, I turn to grinning." Beautifully realized images, tightly captured senses that gravitate toward the "molten core," our own clipped wings seeking anyway the sky, this is a book worth revisiting again and again. Let us have more of these scatterings. Martin Galvin, Ph.D., teacher, author of Wild Card, winner of the Columbia Prize for poetry in 1989 This collection is rich with image and emotion. Moving back and forth between the natural world and the sphere of human endeavors, the poet finds the connections between them, whether ironic or tender. No easy answers, but a voice to accompany us all as we travel our own paths. Deborah Humphreys, poet and author of Conventional Wisdom "The woman welcomed the wet of it to her house" Anne Higgins writes in a poem about the inundation of rain. Reading this volume, I see how that line characterizes the voice of Higgins' work, that of a poet finding her place in the world, assessing and accepting it with wonder and a kind of Buddhist patience. The themes and topics include nature, youth and aging, language, art, death, and weather, all largely couched in the familiar world of goodwill coats, houses, schoolgirls, junk-drawer junk, tools, maps and animals. Among it all, what strikes me most in these poems is the poet's sympathy with both the living and the inanimate, and an unshaken sense of humanity. Sarah Sloat, poet Anne Higgins' poetry is wonderfully genuine. With attention to detail, and a simple honesty of emotion, she invites the reader into her work to become part of the creative process, to make it their own. It is impossible to read Anne's work without feeling that connection to it and wanting more. Lisa Prince, poet and moderator of Inside the Writers Studio