“The poems in this debut collection range from earth to stars and cut to the quick. The impulse to confront loss with unflinching honesty is finely balanced by the impulse toward joy and dazzlement —by language, by color, by wild creatures, by sustaining relationships with others. The title poem demonstrates Sandra Winters’ ability to create small stories with large themes. A calf is born. We are drawn from the moment when the cow “turns her cumbrous head” to the final triumph when “blood bursts red streams, shooting stars,” and “the calf slides out wet, a linen-white face.” These are wise poems. Whatever the loss, new life waits. Wisteria dormant for a decade blooms again. The spirit endures and “we all hang on.” (“The Wisteria Blooms”)”
—Becky Gould Gibson, author of Need-Fire.
PUBLISHED BY FINISHING LINE PRESS 2013
Sandra Ann Winters takes us “one foot and two inches / above [our] line of vision” in poems reminding us to expand our own focus and be wary of what we usually overlook in the process of living our daily lives. From planting wisteria to taking a shower, looking for a dog or laying out a corpse, her words startle us with tender insights and graceful expression.
—Terri Strug, author of Musical Progression in the Poetry of Randall Jarrell
The cover drawing on Calving Under the Moon was created exclusively for this chapbook by North Carolina artist Louis Guidetti.
Available from Finishing Line Press
Sandra Ann Winters 