Cairn New & Selected [Hardcover]

Chosen with care, this volume represents forty years of poems and prose by Peggy Shumaker. Her distinctive cadences give voice to landscapes and people of Alaska and Arizona. This work leads us deep into what remains unresolved, savoring mysteries of heart, mind, and soul. Matters of life and death, these poems embody exuberance and struggle and generosity. Brilliant book! Note how often Peggy Shumaker, profoundly wise and tender poet, writes in honor of something or someone else - has there ever been a more generous soul? These poems of many decades invoke so many rich worlds of being...her elegant spirit and voice turn us all back into the more lyrical people we might be. It is her ongoing gift, and our treasure. --Naomi Shihab Nye, author ofHabibi

Early on in Cairn, Peggy Shumaker asks: Who are we without language? And I respond: Who are we without this poets language, a tongue that often seems to be oracle, speaking to us from a parallel world? In this treasure trove of poetry and short prose that spans decades of her writing life, Shumaker re-shapes our perception of how we move through our lives and the lives of others. As an added bonus, were allowed behind the scenes of her collaboration with the painter Kesler Woodard, complete with the gorgeous paintings that emerged from this conversation between two consummate artists. In all her work, Shumaker grounds us in the present moment, while also allowing us to look up and see: 'The view/vast/beyond us.' --Brenda Miller, author ofTell It Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction

If you read only a single volume of poetry this year, may it be Peggy Shumakers transcendent and luminous Cairn: New & Selected Poems. Traversing more than thirty years of the poets life in letters, Cairn offers readers a panoply of lyric inner and outer journeysfrom Arizonas deserts to Hawaii and Costa Ricas tropics to Alaskas frozen expanses and beyond. Simultaneously, Shumaker charts halÓ,