In this new collection, A Map to Find Each Other, the poet keeps tight focus on the universe that is hers. She watches for signs from that universe-seen and heard-and reflects on each sign, respects each sign. Difficult circumstances change her point of view, her sense of the natural world. Her relationship to that world is transformed, reignited, made sacred by the ways she now sees. This is a beautiful, focused collection that honors love and devotion, and how being a witness to the world of nature offers gifts each day. Deborah Keenan, author of ten poetry collections
In these breathtaking poems about loss and nature’s ways of healing, every image is a compass; each poem, a map to the heart. She says, What we need now is the spiritual fox, an invisible but available creature to walk us out of misery and take us into the forest of fresh air. A beloved’s struggle, whose sigh falls deeper and goes where it goes but then a perfect tree of finches and All that gold changing hands, offered up to anyone lucky enough to witness. If we can’t believe in what life hands us, we can believe in backyard miracles. This collection is a testament to the faithful world of creatures as we embrace and endure our own humanity.
Ann Iverson, author of Art Lessons, The Mouth of Summer, and No Feeling is Final
Rooted in the garden of despair / I scatter seeds of solemn / lament all over the yard… Janet Jerve notes in A Map to Find Each Other, an emotionally resonant collection of poems about a momentous time in the poet’s life-the global pandemic, loss, and her decades long marriage that adapted in order to heal. The poems here are personal, deeply connected to nature, and borne of wisdom that resulted from an intentional decision to notice and listen. There’s enchantment to be found by traveling with Jerve as she follows where wildlife leads her, as if thoughts could be a map, and, in the process, discovers a sense of direction.
Michael Kleber-Diggs, author of Worldly Things
