The Mountain Ash

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‘I’m new here, ’ begins the first poem in Kathy Rabbers’ The Mountain Ash. Each poem in this collection carries that same wide-eyed quality. Here is a life in poems, told simply, but nothing is simple seen with such awareness. The image of a young girl who is ‘too young to know sadness, ’ but still chokes on the memory of her mother with an unknown man at the beach. The same mother tries to plant a mountain ash tree and fails, as her marriage is failing, and yet she teaches her daughter to love words. Darkness and wisdom are threaded through these poems. In ‘Fifth Grade Daydream, ’ my favorite in this collection, the classroom fills with water which reveals at last the beauty of every detail, and brings a ‘wisdom beyond the fifth grade.’ These poems manage to live gracefully in both worlds, the always-new past and the wise present.

• Fleda Brown, author of The Woods Are On Fire: New and Selected Poems