something flown

‘‘‘Hope,’ said Dickinson, ‘is the thing with feathers.’ Patty Crane’s sequence seeks to embody this assertion, and  follows in the tradition of grandly inquisitive lyric explorations such as Ammons’ ‘Corson’s Inlet’ and Williams’  Spring and All.’ Crane fixes a steady gaze on the shifting and too-often inscrutable patterns of the natural world—and always with the goal of transforming description into revelation. This is lyric poetry of the highest order, work of inscape and insight, work that dazzles and instructs.’’

—David Wojahn, author of For the Scribe

“‘The project,’ writes Patty Crane in something flown, ‘is to look/ at the bird/ not there anymore:/ the after-bird.’ These spare, open lines crosshatch into a vision of bird, bird so wholly translated that it escapes its names, and revises us. Amazing! And all right there at the bird feeder! Such good humor and deep love and giving way. Everything about it rings true.”

—Jody Gladding, author of Translations from Bark Beetle

Enter something flown to witness the poetics of transformation, how bird becomes X, daughter—a world, where “the invisible rides on the back of the visible.” Suspend what you know about origins. Lean into what can or cannot be captured, while you fall completely for Patty Crane’s exquisite debut lyric of profound and controlled grace.      —Natasha Kochicheril Moni, Final Judge for Concrete Wolf’s 2017 Chapbook Contest and author of Nearly (dancing girl press, 2018), Lay Down Your Fleece (Shirt Pocket Press, 2017), and The Cardiologist’s Daughter (Two Sylvias Press, 2014).