“Angela Sorby’s collection blends the comic and the tragic in entirely original ways. These poems gaze inward and outward and travel through the world with a keen eye and an unfailing ear for the miraculous music of ordinary language. She brings to each detail a luminous intensity, made that much more startling by its casual subjects—fender-benders, motherhood, the Midwest. Sorby’s is an important voice, speaking to the most important subjects without fear or pretense. Bird Skin Coat is full of striking imagery and compassionate skepticism—an exciting new contribution to American poetry.”—Laura Kasischke
“Whether speaking for a maker of military uniforms or a prison guard, a wife writing to Walt Whitman about her husband’s failure or Jill of nursery rhyme fame, Mark Kraushaar has the uncanny ability to understand how precious identity and selfhood are to every one of us. One of his characters observes, ‘Long ago, before there was anything / there was nothing, except that every one was always / on their way. . .’ and it reads like a statement of faith in humanity. And though another speaks of the earth, as seen from a plane, as ‘wonderful, ridiculous, and sad,’ you finish this collection happy to know that Mark Kraushaar lives there.”—Mark Jarman
There will be an on-site dessert reception immediately after the reading, with the Union's famous cookies and brownie and lemon squares and chocolate-covered strawberries and fruit punch!
