Description: What happens when four poets, friends for years, gather in a beautiful place to sit on a porch to talk, live, breathe, create poetry for days at a time? These friends all have led workshops and presented poetry and stories to audiences for many years. All are well-known and well respected practitioners and teachers of their craft. But these poetry days were different. These days offered the poets a chance to take a deep, reflective dive into their own approach to the art, at their own pace, with sharp, insightful input from each other. Not only were their skills examined, but also their relationships to the work, to the landscape around them, to the poems that seemed to spring from the mountain air as they laughed, cooked, mused on the porch swing, and absorbed the creative juices surrounding them in that special place. The result is this remarkable chapbook containing some of the output of those sessions over a period of several years. The poems each have distinctive voices, but they are not attributed in the text to the individuals, emphasizing the exceptional bond these poets established with each other and with their surroundings. A lovely and intriguing book.
Brief description: Susanna Connelly Holstein's work has appeared in the poetry anthologies "Fed From the Blade" (Woodland Press), "Voices on Unity: Coming Together, Falling Apart" and "Diner Stories" (Mountain State Press) as well as in short story anthologies and online journals. She was a columnist for 10 years for the regional magazine "Two-Lane Livin'" and has been blogging since 2007. A traditional storyteller and ballad singer, Susanna has performed for national venues and to audiences across West Virginia. In 2015 Susanna was named a West Virginia History Hero. When not writing or performing, she sells antiques and works in her gardens in Jackson County.