This Going, This Grace

As Maureen Ackerman writes in a characteristically tough and tender poem, ‘Everything sings for love.’ Her poems arise like a soloist in a choir, whose individual beauty and brilliance occur within and depend on her awareness of the group. She is of and for this world, yet perched above it, too, involved in what she calls ‘the trick of stars.’ Here is a dazzling poet. Here is a lyrical, generous heart.

-Roger Rosenblatt, author of ‘Making Toast’ and ‘Kayak Morning’ Maureen Ackerman’s poems are fresh and ardent and ravishing. Her images-a bird poised on the lip of a pool; a deer captured in the chapel of dusk-come from a simple world, the natural world, yet she transforms them into symbols of radiance, of transcendence. Ackerman writes from a place of true understanding: of the knotty complexity of love, the inexorability of time, the enduring consolations of nature. Her poems have depth and reach but also an unmistakable lightness. They are infused by something she writes about often: grace.

-Jessica Teich, author of the memoir ‘The Future Tense of Joy