Tess Gallagher's new poems are suspended between contradiction and beauty

Is, Is Not upends our notions of linear time, evokes the spirit and sanctity of place, and hovers daringly at the threshold of what language can nearly deliver while offering alternative corollaries as gifts of its failures. Tess Gallagher's poems reverberate with the inward clarity of a bell struck on a mountaintop. Guided by humor, grace, and a deep inquiry into the natural world, every poem nudges us toward moments of awe. How else except by delight and velocity would we discover the miracle within the ordinary?

Gallagher claims many Wests--the Northwest of America, the Northwest of Ireland, and a West even further to the edge, beyond the physical. These landscapes are charged with invisible energies and inhabited by the people, living and dead, who shape Gallagher's poems and life. Restorative in every sense, Is, Is Not is the kind of book that takes a lifetime to write--a book of the spirit made manifest by the poet's unrelenting gaze and her intimate engagement with the mysteries that keep us reaching.

Author: Tess Gallagher
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 05/07/2019
Pages: 160
Weight: 0.5lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9781555978419


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 05/01/2019 pg. 98
Shelf Awareness 05/10/2019
Publishers Weekly 05/20/2019

About the Author
Tess Gallagher is the author of eleven books of poetry, including Midnight Lantern: New and Selected Poems, Dear Ghosts, and Moon Crossing Bridge. Gallagher spends time in County Sligo, Ireland, and also in her hometown of Port Angeles, Washington