Description: This is the hardest kind of listening. / And who will care? / Most do not. / It's all applause, / applause applause. / How is it possible / to ask for more than that?
An honest work, stunningly passionate: Kim Cornwall's spirit-infused poetry weaves family and myth--strong women, wild landscapes, the search for reconciliation in circumstances beyond control--in a radiant language of pain, solace, wonder, and gratitude. This remarkable first and last collection of poetry celebrates and chronicles the borderless area between joy and suffering, like breath after long submersion: for one must breech the surface/where what we most need/ lives.Brief description: Wendy Erd is an Alaska poet and coordinator of the program Poems in Place.
Review Quotes: "
"Of Darkness & Light collects a brief handful of poems by Kim Cornwall. As a child in Washington state she was victim of sexual assault, and as an adult she came to Alaska trying to outpace her memories. Unable to overcome the trauma, she took her own life in 2010, leaving behind poetry that is gathered here by editor Wendy Erd.
Only one of the poems directly addresses her assault, but a sense of irrecoverable loss permeates much of the book."
-- "Daily News-Miner"