Small Craft

Janet Edmonds lives and writes on Cape Cod near Barnstable's salt marshes and harbor. Her work is infused with a strong sense of place and time - and plenty of sea salt. The poems in Small Craft immerse themselves in the glittering, turbulent waters of Cape Cod to see what can be salvaged and salvage what can be seen. Using a sound-rich diction, Edmondsdescribes the lowliest razor clam and the brightest constellations in the night sky. She combines presence and absence, light and dark, the knowable and the mysterious nature of things.

The poems in Small Craft immerse themselves in the glittering, turbulent waters of Cape Cod to see what can be salvaged and salvage what can be seen. Using a sound-rich diction, Edmonds

describes the lowliest razor clam and the brightest constellations in the night sky.

In "Watercolors" she recalls a lost beloved and their way of life together:

"And gone but caught/Again in your blue eyes/Landing on miracles:/A

sea brick,/A starfish-" Like the morning heron glimpsed later in the same poem,

she combines presence and absence, light and dark, the knowable and the

mysterious nature of things.

JENNIFER BARBER author of The Sliding Boat Our Bodies Made, founding editor of Slamander Magazine

Janet Edmonds' Small Craft is big in beauty, power, eloquence, and wit. This is a volume every lover of Cape Cod will want to add to their library. In fact, anyone who enjoys the ocean will appreciate what is on offer here. Edmonds gives us poetry to be savored along with a good cup of tea by a crackling fire, or even read aloud to a friend while sitting on a windswept beach on a summer's day. I believe my soul could live for a week on a line like: "Seagulls' wingbeats whisper upward".

WILL VAUS author of The Hidden Story of Narnia

With graceful rhythms and striking imagery, Edmonds illuminates a fresh perspective on Cape Cod's beauty, exuberance, occasional starkness, and gentle melancholy. If you love the beach, the stars, and nature, you will enjoy this collection of poems.

MARY E. McDERMOTT author of Old Orleans: Memories of a Cape Cod ...