AND YET, my new poetry book, is now available through Finishing Line Press. Presales, which determine the press run, begin today, April 27, and run through June 18. Books are shipped August 11, 2017. The cost is 14.99 plus 2.99 shipping. www.finishinglinepress.com Click Bookstore

Now that you have the basics, I’d like to give thanks to the many poets who have inspired and provided suggestions for the poems in this book: Pauletta Hansel, Poet Laureate of Cincinnati, the women of the Practice of Poetry and the Practice of Spiritual Memoir, my fellow students in Creative Writing Vision classes at Thomas More College and Ohio River Retreats at the Thomas More College Biology Station, the poets I’ve met through Conrad’s Corner, a poetry radio program on WYSO 91.3 FM, and my first writing circle, “Mudrock Writers,” who aided me in shaping my writing and “putting it out there.”

The title of this book, And Yet,  is taken from a poem of the same name. Here it is.

And Yet 

Rita Coleman

Out of the inky spill
emerge tiny objects
sculpted into
faces, words, wings.
Drumbeats coax
them into villages
of shadows.

The search for sky virtues
designed only for the earth–
caves, fields, rivers–
leads to dwellings of
long-ago mothers
and terrified children
vigilant for night monsters.

Starborn birds
drop feathers of hope
scarlet
azure
iridescent
reassuring lost ones
they will find the way.

When forgiveness is served
knots of fury untangle,
woven love
cradles earthen plates
and primitive paintings
lit by a circle of firebright,
all of it fragrant as star anise.