Between Earth and Sky

The first poem here portrays the capacious mindfulness and vision of Georgia O'Keefe on a meditative walk in the desert as she gathers materials from near and far, at her feet and beyond the horizon, for another of her famous works of quiet comfort or fiery instigation, and it is that same spirit and method that Jo Kennedy brings to her own artful, awakened work, guiding us "into memory / of what we lose in the world, / then find again in hill and bone and sky." This collection features that integral balance between mortality and rebirth, the grave and the flower that adorns it, an unending cycle of losing and finding-the centering, profound understanding which once animated the poetry of Keats and Coleridge, yet is as fresh as today's sunset and dawn, memory and dream. Lost in wandering or in isolation, we'll want to take the enticing offer in these poems, the fire on the mountains "beckoning us on, / calling us back."-Gregory Donovan, author of Torn from the Sun and Calling His Children HomeWith a lyricism contained in powerful, compact lines, Jo Kennedy takes us to "...a white space between earth and sky/ where even the ice is lovely in its treachery...". These poems reach beyond the literal to a spiritual place where one can enter grace even when "...lost in your own geography/...where oceans and rivers,/earth and sky scatter/into bedrock and dream... Kennedy offers hope and empathy for the universal struggle of facing loss and moving forward. "Lean in to loss..." the speaker says in "The Summer of Our Isolation, "...barter hard for life...lean in, lean in."-Roselyn Elliott, author of Ghost of the Eye and The Separation of Kin