Rise Wildly

In Rise Wildly, poet and journalist Tina Kelley writes with precision, heart, and humor. Touching on matters such as marriage, child-rearing, and caregiving for her mother and her earth, Kelley’s poems betray an unabashed affection for big words and small children. As a journalist, she has heard and told hundreds of stories, and like all reporters, values facts and the psychological heft behind them. Her mind catches on shiny facts and phrases that she gathers in combinations that can surprise, delight, and inform. Both reverent and irreverent, but always aiming for accuracy and empathy, Kelley explores the darkest corners, then lifts her eyes high.

The poems in Rise Wildly touch on stories from the front row seat of Kelley’s life, especially in her role as caregiver. Written with reverence for the vicissitudes of being a mother, wife, and daughter, Rise Wildly touches on it all: birth, childhood, middle age, old age, death, and their epic combinations. Musings on fact, fiction, music, nature, and family are relayed with humor, grief, joy, and adoration.